Research continues to show that when public agencies offer a better customer experience, they deliver measurable impacts across multiple priorities. To that end this report focusses its research on what approaches are currently happening across the world in respect of delivering an improved experience for all our customers and stakeholders. It is acknowledged that in many industries, the term “user” designates a person who uses a product or service and the term “customer” refers to a person that purchases or pays for a product or service. In our review of the submitted case studies we noticed that different administrations tend to use the terms interchangeably. Therefore, in the case of public agencies, such as Transport Administrations, one can take the general view that the person is paying for the services directly (tolls) or indirectly (fuel taxes, registration fees, etc.,) and therefore they can be seen as a “customer” that we have an obligation to ensure they get value for money. For the purposes of this report, the concept of “stakeholder” and "user" are therefore included in the definition of “customer”.
Whilst there are many definitions to describe Customer Experience for the purposes of this report it has been defined as: “The sum of all interactions in the journey between a customer and an organisation in the delivery of a service”.
We need to look carefully at what that means from an individual perspective and the experiences they have as the go along their customer journey in accessing the services we provide as road and transport agencies as we serve both customers and citizens and often in the context of being the only service provider in the marketplace.
A total of 16 case studies were received providing information in a standardised template to help homogenise the collection of the information in this report. The intention here is to share what current practice looks like in respect of customer experience across a range of transport and road agencies. The findings will inform the final report that is being prepared by PIARC Technical Committee 1.1 Working Group 1 that is exploring reporting on the performance of road and transport administrations focusing on the customer facing levels of service underpinning asset management, models and frameworks in use, how we capture creation of public value and understanding decisions and practices around communicating, engaging and activating the community.