Which? - Annual Survey of Passenger Satisfaction

[whole diary]

[NickB]

Asking questions only of actual passengers, rather than of the population at large, would tend to skew the results towards the favourable. Some of the population consider some rail services to be so bad that they no longer patronise them, the views of such people are in my view valid but they will be excluded from rail industry surveys.

As an example I found the Thameslink service to be appalling and by far the worst of any TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) that I used regularly. It was so bad as to be a contributory factor in my decision to leave London.
My negative views regarding Thameslink certainly wont feature in any passenger surveys as I am no longer a Thameslink victim.
My negative views WOULD however be reflected in any survey among the wider population.
There must be many like me.

Rail industry surveys wont include people who have paid hundreds of pounds to stand for hours and then vowed "never again" and decided to drive instead.
A survey of the wider population would include those ex customers.

Alternatively, if you ask my friends and relatives who only travel on trains VERY infrequently they will say how great the service is.  This is because they travel off-peak, on days when the sun shines, pay less than ^4000 per ticket, and only when trains are running happily.   Whereas I, as a daily commuter come rain or shine, think it sucks.

I would argue that those who are minded to participate in surveys are those with agendas.  Therefore results skew towards the very happy or the very sour.

[chrisr_75]

I think someone needs to do this - " there are 3 kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics"! 

[didcotdean]

The only time I have been asked to fill out a Passenger Focus survey was on a one-off journey, which I've never done before or since. Luck of the draw I guess.

[TaplowGreen]

I think someone needs to do this - " there are 3 kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics"! 

........or there could perhaps be a refreshing willingness to accept that (subject to the usual variations inherent in any survey) public opinion suggests that the Railway Industry needs to up its game and work harder at customer satisfaction, rather than circling the wagons and/or shooting the messenger?

[grahame]

Having been involved in some very localised "ask the customer / potential customer" exercises over the past year, I have to agree that it's difficult to interpret the results and indeed it's also possible to ask questions which bias the results.  The most reliable guidance that's practical to get from this sort of thing is by undertaking multiple studies in multiple ways, and also by comparing data across between similar operations within the same study.  On this basis, both Passenger Focus and Which? studies are worth a good look, even though both can also be argued individually to be flawed

A message to anyone asked to complete a survey when making a journey that's not your usual one.  Please complete the survey.  There will be other one-off users on other days and you represent them too - in some ways your response is more important than that of the regular passenger as you represent more people.  Many people refuse a survey because "it's my only use" and it's frustrating to the surveyor (or at least to the survey organisation) as it biases the results.

[Chris from Nailsea]

... if you look at Businesses that are consistently top rated for Customer Service you will find the likes of John Lewis, M & S, Amazon, Waitrose, ........these are hardly small businesses, but they have made a commercial decision to make a culture of good customer service one of their differentiators/USPs, and they exist in highly competitive environments where a bad customer experience means that customers will transfer their business to a readily available alternative.

Running the likes of John Lewis, M&S, Amazon, Waitrose doesn't require decisions to be made at the drop of a hat, an instant outcome.  They may have hours, days, weeks, months to resolve customer issues.

Firstly, I must declare my personal interest here: I work for Waitrose.

Waitrose is the retail grocery arm of the John Lewis Partnership - so it's probably not fair to treat them as two separate businesses, when comparing them with (just for example) First Great Western. 

But I can assure you that I have been required to make decisions, "at the drop of a hat" to provide an instant outcome to the satisfaction of my customer: I certainly don't have "hours, days, weeks, months to resolve customer issues" as a delivery driver.