Return to Transportation Consumer Research  Transportation Consumer Research    Project Summary :: 1  2  3  4  5  6   Background NJ Transit needed customer satisfaction metrics on a monthly basis for their commuter rail system. Specifically, they wanted to know: What are the trends in customer satisfaction and what factors influence these changes? On which train lines within the system is customer satisfaction changing and in what direction? What are customers’ main concerns? Where are they satisfied? How must NJ Transit improve? To address these questions and many others, Resource Systems Group, Inc. developed an online panel study whereby new customer satisfaction data is collected every month from one of three separate customer panels. Each panel respondent is surveyed four times at three month intervals, giving NJ Transit new customer satisfaction data every month throughout the year and allowing them to track customer satisfaction trends as well as customer origin and destination changes. Project Scope •  Designed a panel structure and sampling plan to ensure necessary statistical precision and ridership distribution •  Created an internet-based customer satisfaction survey with innovative features: origin/destination real time geocoding, direct referencing of NJ Transit’s rail schedule data, sophisticated use of prior responses to adapt the survey for each respondent and to allow them to see their prior responses •  Managed the recruitment process, obtained and communicated with a panel database of over 26,000 initial respondents •  Created internet-based tools and reports to allow field recruiters to input data via the web into the respondent database, correct bad email addresses, and track quotas •  Conducted analysis of panel data, which includes a longitudinal analysis that provides greater statistical precision over a repeated cross section survey, as cross sectional variance is eliminated when the same people are surveyed multiple times Project Results NJ Transit now has the monthly metrics they were lacking, but they also have much more. The panel is an invaluable resource for NJ Transit, consisting of a large base of their rail customers (over 13,000 active members) that is being tapped into to understand customer satisfaction trends, ridership attrition and attraction trends, and shifts in rider origin and destinations.