Research: Customer Experience in Stations

Customer Experience is the sum of feelings and perceptions along the entire customer journey. Metros are striving to provide more than basic service driven by rising customer expectations and opportunities of new technologies. The study explored how metros define and measure customer experience, as well as looked in detail at six dimensions as the most important ways in which stations contribute to overall customer experience: trip planning, fare payment, wayfinding, providing customer help, cleanliness, and amenities in stations.

Metros can adopt multiple strategies to improve customer experience in stations. Considering the pros and cons of the following strategies would help to identify suitable initiatives.

Due to the impacts of COVID-19, metros have made the substantial changes to how they operate their systems and manage customer experience in stations, i.e. shifting to contactless payment, requiring face coverings, enhancing cleaning, providing real-time crowding information, etc.

Research: Measuring and Improving Customer Satisfaction

This case study focused on the methods that metros use to measure customer satisfaction as well as the initiatives deployed to improve customer satisfaction. The study also discussed how to identify the right added amenities for metros that go over and above delivering the basic expectations of a metro service.

CoMET and Nova KPI data shows the average satisfaction rate for American Metros has seen significant fluctuations, while the average satisfaction rates for metros in other continents have generally increased more steadily year-on-year.

CoMET and Nova, customer satisfaction trends, from KPI data, split by continent (1999-2016)

Metros mainly measure customer satisfaction via customer satisfaction surveys and/or more innovative measurement techniques (e.g. focus groups interview, mystery shoppers). To increase customer satisfaction, improvements were classified into three categories: those which result in improved data collection resulting in an improved understanding of customers’ needs (such as more frequent data collection or better methods); those which improve basic services, respond to customer expectations and increase overall “performance” (such as increased train frequency or modified cleaning procedures); and those which result in added customer amenities (such as Wi-Fi on trains).