Edinburgh Trams has been recognised as one of the UK’s top transport operators for customer service.

Following a survey of people using the tram earlier this year, the Institute of Customer Service (ICS) awarded the organisation a score of 85.8 – more than 11 points above the transport industry average.

The score was also 8 points higher than the average for UK business and, in a report, the Institute highlighted the fact that tram customers were most satisfied with the helpfulness and competence of staff.

Dean Anderson, Customer Experience Manager at Edinburgh Trams, commented: “We’re delighted to have performed so well and the feedback reflects our commitment to putting customers right at the heart of our operations.”

The ICS, an independent body for customer service professionals, helps organisations compare their performance against others through its respected Business Benchmarking process.

As well as considering overall satisfaction, the survey also tracked other key aspects of the customer experience and found the tram easy to use when compared to other transport services.
“With a ‘Customer Effort’ rating of 2.8 – whereby a lower score reflects less effort required by a customer to use a particular service – we compared very favourably with the wider industry, which had an average score of 4.9,” Dean explained.

“The report also contained feedback from customers, and it’s a real bonus that words such as clean, quick, friendly, smooth, reliable and comfortable all featured prominently in their responses,” he added.

More than 30% of customers who added comments did so around a possible extension. One customer wrote:

“Extend the line – it’s great!”