Maintaining service quality First Transit
Ensuring a smooth transition for our former Laidlaw customers has been a key focus in the latter part of this year.
Through a marketing campaign entitled 'The Power of Fusion' we have kept our customers and employees abreast of developments associated with the Laidlaw acquisition. The campaign has emphasised the benefits of bringing together two dynamic organisations. Our Regional Vice Presidents visited all new customers in the last quarter to obtain face-to-face feedback. These visits were important in building relationships with new customers and addressing any concerns they may have had.
Each of our service contracts incorporates a number of key performance indicators against which the quality of our service is monitored. In addition we set ourselves company wide performance targets relating to the generic performance areas relevant to most contracts: these are trips on time (service punctuality), operator availability (which affects service reliability) and preventative maintenance completed on time.
We continue to achieve our targets in relation to trips on time and operator availability.
We fall slightly short on our target for preventative maintenance although performance has improved since last year. Our target in this area is challenging and requires cooperation from our customers to make vehicles available. Through continued partnership working we will work to achieve our goal.
We continue to seek to improve customer satisfaction by enhancing the training of our drivers and technicians supported by actions to improve driver retention rates. Employee training is conducted through First Transit University for managers and supervisors. This training focuses throughout on customer service and customer relations. It also encourages interaction between managers and the sharing of best practice which together promote the development of consistent customer service levels across the company.
We also employ more than 25 full time support staff who are trained in virtually every aspect of transit operations and management. They are available to provide assistance to all our customers in areas such as performance audits, maintenance audits, safety and security audits, user and non-user surveys and paratransit reviews.
