Inez Evans-Benson on Leadership and the Future of Transportation

(upbeat music) - Welcome back to Met Despectives. Joining me today is Aynas Evans Benson with WSP. Aynas. - It's going well, Alex, how are you today? - I'm doing great, thanks. It's been a while since we chatted. We were, you know, before we were talking a little bit about your stay with Indigo. Can you talk a little bit about yourself and your background and transit coming into your position with WSP? - Absolutely. You know, so first, you know, Indigo, I helped to develop one of the country's first all-electric and at the time, longest BRT lines in Indianapolis, you know, that's a competition with all of our transit folks who's gonna be the biggest one. As well as putting the foundation in place for Indigo for their two additional bus rapid transit projects for that city. So they'll have three altogether, a great feat for them. It worked with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, otherwise known as VTA in San Jose, California, to implement its first of the kind bus rapid transit service for the region, helping to connect more people within the San Jose area, you know, and to help that economic opportunity. While in Cincinnati, as their chief operating officer, helped to put in the first street car system, which ignited economic activity in a totally underserved community. You know, I serve on a number of boards with the American Public Transportation Foundation, American Public Transportation Association. And as we've already talked about previously, the first woman of color and CEO of Indigo, and I also serve on the WTS International Board as its international treasure. Today, I serve in my day job as the senior vice president and deputy of Transit and Rail Market Leader at WSP, which helps to parlay all of those years of experience into actionable insights for transit agencies. - Great, quite accomplished. We have to save some for the rest of us, I guess. (laughs) We could say that. You've talked a little bit about customer satisfaction and customer experience, not being the same. Can you talk a little bit about those two terms and how they differ? - You know, that's a great conversation because I do think people think they are the same and that they're interchangeable. So customer satisfaction typically refers to, you know, how riders rate specific aspects of the service, such as punctuality, cleanliness, safety, or fair value. And reflects whether a narrow set of expectations were met at a particular moment, you know, during their ride. You know, metrics are helpful, but it's not, it's just part of the story. It's not the only thing, but it's just part of that story. - Absolutely. - But when we look at the customer experience, by contrast, it's so much broader, so much bigger. It encompasses the entire end-to-end journey from sidewalk to the seat, planning a trip, assessing the stations, navigating the delays, interactions with staff, the reliability across the days and the routes, and even how disruptions are communicated to them. So a rider may be satisfied with an individual trip, yet still have a poor overall experience if the system is confusing, unreliable, or even stressful. And the experience may differ dramatically based on the rider. By understanding that one size does not fit most agencies or most rider demographics, agencies can develop more meaningful metrics. - Right. - And I mean, one of the great things about being with Metro and putting the stories out and having trade shows in the past and doing much perspectives, I think people at transit agencies will kind of see something, share some of the demographics that you might have, say in the enapolis, come out to you, give you a call, visit your agency and figure out how that may work for them. In this kind of world where one size doesn't fit all, can you talk a little bit about that nuanced approach than ABC could take on to think about the passenger and put in the passenger first, essentially? - Absolutely. We all go to these trade shows and like you said, we come back, we're all excited, we have all these great ideas and we're just picking stuff off the shelf and we're like, okay, let's do that and let's do that. But they're taking that experience and they're saying, that's gonna work for us. But did you talk to your community to even see what they wanted? And so you have to discuss the potential needs and how maybe some of those small changes can impact the commuter versus the parent with strollers because they're gonna have a different expectation on board of vehicle versus the commuter. Young children, senior citizens, persons with disabilities, everybody's gonna have or want something different and what their definition is going to be, how they're gonna be satisfied and what the experience that they seek. And then the transit leaders have a challenge but they also have an opportunity because they're serving such a diverse community and looking at its needs, they're gonna be able to help connect people across the city wherever they live. So just don't come back in a vacuum, thinking you found the golden ticket and that you're gonna solve everything without talking to the community to see what it is that excites them and what they want. - Interesting. There are so many aspects of or parts of the community that want different things. How does an agency balance that and how as a consultant does WSP help an agency kind of find the balance of essentially pleasing everybody somehow but maybe admittedly not giving them everything that they want. - Well, you just put satisfying everyone and that is a tall order right in them itself. But when you're holding too often transit agencies and we were guilty of it, let's do a survey and let's see what everybody wants but is really even the survey of the mechanism that can best give you the information. I find that it's better to do customer interviews, having that conversation, doing webinars and making sure that you are enlisting individuals within all the broader realms of the demographic realm because to one person just having the bus on time is great. We're checking all their boxes, yes. But to someone else, they want a plug-in so they can charge their phone or another person they want web service or internet rather onboard the vehicle. It's different for everyone. So again, it's not a one-size discussion because when we come in as a consultant, we're gonna suggest that we have that conversation with the agency but then again with the community and to be able to ascertain what is it that keeps you excited about writing transit or what will it take to get you to write transit? That is the other aspect. - Right. And you may have touched on it but again, what are some kind of innovative ways agencies are improving the customer experience? - That's a great question. Looking at their infrastructure, is it safe? Is it reliable? Is it fast? There are some agencies that are putting beacon sensors along their routes in order to help individuals who are visually impaired be able to navigate. But even if you're not visually impaired, if you've never visited an area and you have the beacon sensors and you have the app, it can help you navigate within a city that you've never navigated before. So that leads you into technology. So you've got infrastructure, technology. We're all going to smart cards and tap cards. We're using our phones but if the technology isn't consistently working, then people can't get the information and support that they need when and where they need it, both onboard the vehicle, maybe even before they even get on the vehicle and at home. But some have found success with rewards and gamification. For example, Seattle installed a program that particularly res-- with the millennials that got their ridership up to be able to boost things for them. And then some are looking at the human and sensory elements of their system. Looking at lighting, is it dark? Is it dim? How can we light things up? Because again, that goes back to safety. safety, the perception of safety. LA Metro found that piping classical music on a loop at one of their stations helped. I don't know if it was calming, but it seemed like it helped. And very low tech, very low investments kind of thing, but it helped. But then you have the low tech kind of things where just the human element of a bus driver, what kind of culture program do you have within your system that helps giving a passenger a smile and saying good morning and good afternoon is one of those things that, how can you even put a price tag on that? And like just to kind of backtrack a little bit on gamification, kind of simplifying that, that's kind of similar to if you go to a restaurant and you tap and you get points and then you get free food or something like that. It's very similar to that program. Yes. Exactly. So, and I know that one of their elements is they're rating their ride, they're giving feedback more in real time to the agency. And that helps for them to get free rides. You know, it's like ride so many times, give us so much information and you get a free ride on us or maybe they're put into a drawing. It's different things for different people. One of the things that Womada did was giving an annual report to their customers on their ridership behavior. They loved it. You know, you would think, I know how many times I rode the bus or the train, but getting that report and then it showed what was their impact on improving the environment. So, that's another thing. What is in it for me? What's my share and knowing that they contribute to the decrease of carbonization within their area for some was very important. Yeah. And that's a really big benefit. I know it's difficult for trans-ad agencies to get that feedback they need. Probably the same people feeling at the survey every time traditionally. But if you put it in this app, then I think you're getting a larger audience of people that are responding and providing their feedback, right? Exactly. Exactly. It's so important. We always struggle, you know, getting folks to give us feedback, especially positive feedback. And our folks need to be patented on the back and told that they're doing a great job. We have, you know, when you're transporting so many and 1% of the population is telling you what you could do better, you know, we always turned it around and said, well, if only 1% is telling us what we could do better, then we have 99% who told us we were doing a great job. So. Yeah. Yeah, it's like that old. I can't remember. It's been a long time. It's a work in customer service. But I remember always hearing, if you do a job well, they tell nobody you do a job horribly. Everybody knows. Everybody knows. And we need to figure out a way to reverse that. We need to figure out a way to reverse that. And so we would cheer that, you know, with our board members and we would focus on the 99% not that we were not focused on the 1% because that is still important. That is giving us feedback on how we can improve. But we didn't want to lose sight of that 99% that was really telling us that we were really doing a great-- our employees were out there doing a great job. Yeah. And, you know, thanks again for joining me. And as I appreciate it, I'm going to say, I have a couple more questions. But before we get to the last couple of questions, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how customer satisfaction has become such a keystone for transit, especially, I think, post-post-candemic, how it's raised its stature alongside of telling this ridership story, which hasn't exactly been a success for a lot of transit agencies. Well, I think many of transit agencies always measure their success by ridership. And so, you know, that's how funding you-- you know, you send in your annual report to say how many riders you get, and you get a little slice of the pie at the end of it. And so the question started coming up as Uber and Lyft and other rideshare programs came up to be is what could we as transit agencies be doing better? And I think in talking with our customer base, we were able to start discerning what was important to our customers. So our current customers and potential customers, frequency, was probably the number one thing that people were looking for, frequency. And then to having technical, logical services on board the vehicle. When the pandemic hit, there were many areas where those family members didn't have internet services. The bus became that lifeline to the community. And so many transit agencies parked buses in areas to become that internet hub for the community. So young people could still go to school, because remember, everybody was in school. And so then they learned that, OK, I don't have internet on my buses. How do I do that? Who can I partner with to help me pay for that? Having charging ports on board your vehicles sounds like a simple thing. But if you replace your buses every 12 years, how do you speed up that ability to give people the option is having information about what's going on in your community, things of that nature. We also found that having more presence on board the vehicles was important, more ambassadors riding the vehicles, individuals who could give information about the transit agency, but also people who could give information about what was going on about services in the community also was another thing. So what I think we're trying to get to is that interconnectivity within transit and the community as a whole. And I think for the entirety of the customer experience and customer satisfaction, transit agencies are thinking broader than just the routes that they're serving, but they're thinking about how they can serve the community as a whole as an integrated partner, putting in food centers at their transit centers, putting in health care, facilities at their centers, having mental health professionals at their facilities and board their vehicles. It really is becoming a comprehensive, because if you start to address all of those other things, the positive customer experience follows through on in other aspects. With transit agencies kind of facing a large range of options and obviously the tell, tell, tell story of limited resources, can you talk a little about where should transit leaders start? Talking to their community. You cannot do this without talking to your community. And I don't mean just having a board meeting, a meeting at your office and saying, OK, we're here to talk about. You have to go out into the community and talk to the people. Getting on board the vehicles with ambassadors or with a company that can go out and actually do customer interviews to find out what's resonating. We did that one time at Indigo and found that people-- we needed to give more room for grocery carts on board. The bus is that, went towards the customer experience and their satisfaction. We redesigned the two front seats just beyond the ADA area and the next series of buses. So the seat flipped up so they could actually get their grocery cart in and it could be used for strollers as well. And so I think it's really drilling down and then being honest on how you can roll out some things. That was a long-term shipment on a new style of bus, but it wasn't going to be on every bus. So that still wasn't going to satisfy everyone. Making sure that if you are providing your internet service, who's watching to see that it's consistently working? Where are you having outages? So it's just providing that consistency of care and concern. And then reporting. So having a committee of concerned citizens that focus on the experience and satisfaction is something that a transit agency can easily do instead of consistently relying upon individuals within the organization to be the only voice that you hear. Great. I appreciate this conversation. I thought it was great. I think there's a lot of nuggets here for people to take and run with and obviously reach out to you for more information and further information. I really appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much. Alex, you take care. Thanks, too. [MUSIC PLAYING]