The Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA) has unveiled high marks it received from customers in conjunction with a recent customer satisfaction survey of more than 500 customers. Results of the survey, which was conducted at different times of day and days of the week on all PSTA routes to measure customer impressions, indicate that PSTA is outperforming the national transit industry in customer satisfaction by 20%.
PSTA chief executive officer Brad Miller expressed his satisfaction with his team’s performance for both customers and taxpayers of Pinellas County. He was joined by Mark Aesch, chief executive officer of TransPro Consulting, LLC, a Tampa-based public sector management company that conducted the customer survey and analyzed the survey results.
“All of us at PSTA are working hard to provide an ideal balance between the value we provide to the taxpayers of Pinellas County and the quality of the transit services our PSTA customers experience and these survey results indicate we are succeeding in our efforts,” Miller said.
According to Aesch, who presented survey results to the PSTA Board of Directors during its February meeting, PSTA scored notably high marks for bus operator performance, bus safety, and service improvements over the course of the past year.
“Nearly 90% of customers agree that the buses are well-driven, and more than 90% of customers said they feel safe riding the bus,” Aesch said. “What’s really impressive here is that 97% of PSTA customers felt that service quality has improved or stayed the same over the past year.”
Aesch also pointed out that PSTA achieved a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 32%, a full 20% higher than the transit industry average NPS of 12% for customer satisfaction.
Net Promoter Score is a widely used customer satisfaction index ranging from -100 to 100 that measures the willingness of customers to recommend a company's products or services to others. It is used as a proxy for gauging the customer's overall satisfaction with a company's service and the customer's loyalty to the brand.
PSTA customer David Kovar, who joined other customers today to learn about the survey results, is self-proclaimed transit aficionado who has used transit systems throughout the world. He speaks highly of his PSTA experience, noting, “I expect to become fully dependent on public transportation at an age earlier than most.”
