Staff Report #17
April 27, 2025
To All Commissioners
Re: Customer Insights Panel
Recommendation
That the Commission:
- APPROVE the creation of a Customer Insights Panel; and
- DIRECT Administration to initiate the process of establishing the Panel.
Background
The 2026 Work Program includes an initiative to establish a group of London Transit stakeholders that can be relied upon for ad-hoc feedback throughout the year relating to the conventional and specialized services. This program will not replace the annual Voice of the Customer surveys or other broader customer outreach, but rather be an enhancement to the process of gathering stakeholder feedback.
Administration undertook an industry scan of the various methods in use at transit agencies across the country to gather stakeholder feedback, and in addition to the typical methods London Transit employs (Voice of the Customer surveys, online surveys, public drop-in sessions), a number of agencies have established Customer Insights Panels. A number of agencies who have historically relied on a “Transit Advisory Committee” for feedback have moved away from this approach citing concerns with the limited scope of feedback (associated with the size of the committee) as well as the tendency for members of the committee to focus on issues of personal importance. In these cases, agencies are choosing to move toward the development of an Insights Panel.
Benefits of the Insight Panel approach include:
- a larger group ensures diverse perspectives are gathered and considered and both users and non-users participate;
- provides for greater representation and inclusivity, noting volunteer participants can unsubscribe at any time;
- ongoing recruitment process allows for turnover while ensuring minimum thresholds;
- qualitative and quantitative data can be easily collected; and
- larger group can be scaled to conduct focus groups on specific issues relevant to the participants selected (i.e. geographical or service type)
Key to the success of this approach will be to recruit as many panellists as possible to provide for the greatest representation and inclusivity. Subsequent to Commission approval to proceed, Administration will undertake a campaign which will include an open invitation to the community to participate on this panel. This will be done through a number of outreach mechanisms including on-board posters, social media posts, and in-person recruitment at local events and pop-ups as well as contacts through community groups and committees. The initial target for panel members is between 150 and 200 members, noting that participation in surveys will be monitored and the size of the panel may need to be increased in order to ensure that survey respondents are representative of the cross section of riders.
Interested panellists will be asked to complete a registration form which requests general information about the participant that can be utilized to filter surveys to smaller groups when they are relating to a specific issue, or to ensure there is not over-representation of one particular group. Panellist information will be stored in a database that will also be utilized to generate automatic email invitations to surveys. The type of information that will be collected on the registration form will include but not be limited to:
- the service that is regularly utilized (conventional, specialized or neither);
- personal non-identifiable demographics (age, postal code, accessibility requirements, fare payment type)
- if conventional rider, the routes most often used, and days/time of travel;
- if specialized rider, the days/time of regular travel and the method used to book trips;
- the categories of survey of most interest (conventional service changes, specialized service policies, etc.)
Several agencies utilizing this approach have indicated the need for some form of incentive in order to garner quantitative survey responses. As a starting point, the approach utilized for the Voice of the Customer survey process will be mirrored with this panel, in that each responded is entered into a draw for a monthly transit pass.
Once established it is anticipated this group will be relied upon for feedback on all areas of the organization, which will then be shared in future reports to the Commission.
This initiative will require dedicated staff resources to ensure that the Panel remains at an optimum membership level, and that participation from panel members can be monitored. These duties will be incorporated into a new position for which recruitment is currently underway. In addition, software will be required to manage this database and create mailing lists.
Recommended by:
Caroline Roy, Manager of Corporate Communications
Katie Burns, Director of Planning
Joanne Galloway, Director of Human Resources
Shawn Wilson, Director of Operations – Specialized
David Butler, Director of Operations – Conventional
Concurred in by:
Kelly S. Paleczny, General Manager