While the results of the Bus Passenger Survey (BPS), see p6-7, might appear to only be of interest to bus operators, there’s much that coach and minibus operators can learn from them.
You may be one of the many operators who already survey passengers on your coaches and minibuses. Hopefully, you also properly follow up those who are not satisfied.
One of the many good things to be drawn from the BPS is that it asks consistent questions, so that each region can be compared, and over a long period of time.
The carefully thought-out questions are designed to elicit as accurate and quantitative a response as possible.
You might find that the mainstream media – or lobbyists – will wrongly turn the statistics on their head.
In other words where 90% of passengers are satisfied (which comprises ‘very satisfied’ and ‘satisfied’ responses), they will say therefore that one in 10 passengers is “not happy with their service”.
In part that is true, but when you look closely at the figures, the number of people saying they are either ‘fairly’ or ‘very’ dissatisfied isn’t that large.
The number that is of real interest is those who are ‘neither satisfied nor dissatisfied’.
Notably, operators who score highly have a much lower proportion of these, rather than those who are ‘dissatisfied’.
The BPS analysis shows what operators can do to turn a journey into a good, or great one. The questions is, how to convert the ‘neithers’ into satisfied. This is where the biggest gains could be made.
