Evaluate Customer satisfaction in public transport

Study case :Ankeborg city

General
Quality is one thing that customer looked for every buy something or take service.
Bergman and Klefsjo (2010), quality is the product or service ability to satisfy, or preferably
exceed, the needs and the expectations of the customer. In public transport, make a quality is
how tosatisfy the customers with build the value for them. Sebhatu,et al (2009) say value is one
thing which created and perceived by customer. Furthermore, Sebhatu et al (2011) say the
facilitator of value is service provider and they generate the value with the interactions with the
customer needs. Giving values to customers aimed to reach the main goal in public transport
activities, that is customer satisfaction.
This paper will explain about customer satisfaction in public transport. In details, it will
explain about how to assessment about customer satisfaction from public transport and what
method, also possible danger and pitfall when the assessment was implemented. This paper will
take a study case in Ankeborg city.
Discussion
Customer satisfaction is one main goal for public transport sector. Fellesson et al (2009)
said customer satisfaction is a key development to public transport sector in the future. Customer
satisfaction can become perform measurement to the contract between operators and
authority.Fellesson et al (2009) said though satisfaction become key development, it can become
a measurement to monitor and evaluate operators performance.
Ettema et al (2010) said that there is a close relationship between customer satisfaction and
Social Well-Being (SWB). In public transport, there are affective and cognitive satisfaction that
can make judgement of travel by public transport. Stradling et al (2007) has found that
cleanliness, privacy, safety, convenience, stress, social interaction, and scenery were affective
satisfaction from customer to travel with public transport. On the other hand, cognitive
satisfaction can be detected by costs, travel time and punctuality. This is closely related with
general social well-being. Life satisfaction in social well-being( Ettema et al, 2010) affectedfrom

cognitive component ( a result of day-specific circumstances) and affective component

(emotional episodes in a life).
Based from customer satisfaction, Ankeborgs city government was going to evaluate
public transport changing in Ankeborg city. As general description, Ankeborg city has launch a
revised public transport bus system (new lines, new timetable, new busses, new operator, new
supporting services etc).Ankeborg is a booming 500 000 inhabitant city with high ambitions
regarding economic development, sustainability and wellbeing.
Evaluating Ankeborgs public transport with customer satisfaction has four indicators,
there are about safety, staff behavior, comfort and reliability. Choosing data collection method to
know all indicator is an important thing. That is because every data collection method has own
limitation, and lacking. Data collection method that can measure customer satisfaction among
others,
1. Critical (Customer complaints) data
This method use complaints data in the company or use interview to get data for analyze
customer satisfaction. This method get data based from passengers experiences when use
public transport. Proussaloglou and Koppelman (1989) said using experiences from
passenger, it can easy to know about their decision process,. It aimed to identify the current
service based on experience, and know relationship between both of them. Thus, this model
can foresee about quality improvement in the future. Edvardsson (1998) has explained six
general step in this method,
a. Establish guidelines for what distinguishes critical incidents from normal events;
b. Collect data on critical incidents;
c. Analyze and interpret the data in order to identify patterns;
d. Use the patterns that emerge to form categories and sub-categories;
e. Classify the incidents in the various categories; and
f. Interpret and draw conclusions.
Although this methods can effectively know about customer satisfaction, this method has
many lack which can become possible danger. Thus, many things that must attend with this
method, among others,
a. Amount of data just have only a few. So, all data must be complete and valid with no
exception to less information and must be legible.
b. Participation of customers become a key factor to successfully this method. Many
customers just make complaint but not in details. Even though, description about
their experiences is needed to get clear data.
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c. Sometimes, customers have pressure to talk about their experiences, like from
employee or external factor etc. Thus, many complaint is not valid.
d. Small number of customer complaints are not related or indicate with dissatisfied
customer (Edvarddsson, 1996b). On the other hands, few complaint with wider
spread to other customers can expand dissatisfied customers to the public transport.
2. Questionnaire Surveys
A questionnaire is a set of questions for gathering information from Ankeborg citizen. We
can administer questionnaires by mail, telephone, using face-to-face interviews, as handouts,
or electronically. Questionnaires are restricted to two basic types of question;
Closed-ended (or closed question) is a question for which a researcher provides a
suitable list of responses (e.g. Yes / No). This produces mainly quantitative data.
Open-ended (or open question) is a question where the researcher doesnt provide the
respondent with a set answer from which to choose. Rather, the respondent is asked to
answer "in their own words". This produces mainly qualitative data.
A questionnaire also have limitation:
a) The response rate (that is, the number of questionnaires that are actually returned to us as
the researcher) tends to be very low for postal questionnaires. A 20 - 25% return of
questionnaires is probably something that most researchers would happily settle for and
this may mean that a carefully-designed sample becomes unrepresentative of a target
population.
b) Problem when selecting sample, it is particularly apparent in relation to questionnaires.
When a response rate is very low the responses received may only be the opinions of a
very highly motivated section of the sample (that is, people with strong opinions who
take the time and trouble to complete and return a questionnaire)

3. Customer data
Customer data as a link between objective conditions and behavior. Collect information base
on data about public transport in this city from at least 2 year;
Number of passenger; general figure to describe how passengers behave in traffic and
how they appreciate our products

 Ticket income : important for financial calculations, for example passenger kilo metre
cost; combination with number or passenger.
Quality reports, bus operators; bus operator and stop services, cleanliness of buses
Customer satisfaction via on-board customer satisfaction survey; how passengers behave
in traffic and how they appreciate our products before, is there something we could do
better?
Passenger satisfaction survey; how passengers behave in traffic and how they appreciate
our products before.
Market share of public transport on certain line surrounding Ankeborg; market share
compared to private cars
This method also have limitation:
Validity Data
Continuous data

Conclusion
From all parts above, it can conclude that,
1. Customer satisfaction is an important focused in public transport sector. It can become
the main goal, the contract measurement, also become basic development for them to the
future.
2. Many data collection method that can used for customer satisfaction, such as from
Satisfaction surveys, critical incidents/complaints: an alternative data source or using
customer data in practice.
3. Every methods for data collection has their lack in limitations and possible pitfalls that
must be carefully for used them in measure satisfaction.
4. Selection and implementation of appropriate methods is most determinant for produce a
good evaluation about customer satisfaction.
Reference
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Studentlitteratur, Lund.
Edvardsson, B. (1998) Causes of customer dissatisfaction studies of public transport bythe
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723-732
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