2025: The customer is always satisfied
The phrase "the customer is always right" dates back over 100 years and has driven a shift to customer-centricity and customer-obsession across many industries. This phrase is pervasive in the transport, mobility and logistics sector – a recent PA survey of over 100 transport and infrastructure leaders found that 80% of leaders believed a customer-centric vision should guide the future of transport. Report by Timothy Mangozza, technology expert and Louise Guidi, transport expert at PA Consulting
But is this realistic or even desirable? To explore this further, PA hosted a roundtable discussion at Manchester's Interchange conference in March to discuss and explore this.
This customer-first mentality sounds straightforward but presents profound challenges for infrastructure providers. Can our legacy systems handle such complexity without collapsing? Who foots the bill for such personalised service? How do we balance customer desires against safety, sustainability, and performance imperatives? And what happens when different customers want conflicting things? What emerged from the roundtable discussion was a more nuanced perspective - while the customer isn't always right, they must remain at the heart of decision-making.
Understanding what the customer needs, not necessarily what they want
A critical challenge for the transport, mobility and logistics sector is the disconnect between what customers say they want and what they actually need. “Travel is about derived demand,” noted one participant. “People don't use transport for its own sake – they're trying to reach work, education, or leisure activities.” The primary need for transport and mobility is therefore to be at a destination often at a specific time, in a safe manner, using the most appropriate mode; transport users focus on specific transport mode(s) that they choose being quick, cheap, comfortable, accessible, having high levels of customer service, etc. One of the challenges here is that some customers segments (social media savvy, always-connected customer) share widely their dissatisfaction in real-time; yet the same customer segment rarely shares their satisfaction, and the views of others (those less-connected, including socially) remain unarticulated and unheard.
There is no single customer; rather lots of different customers often with competing interests
Ideally transport and mobility services are provided in a cheap, comfortable, accessible manner. However, the reality is that aging transport infrastructure means that this is neither practical nor affordable. Transport and mobility providers therefore need to make trade-offs around competing customer needs which isn’t easy. The need for transport/mobility is perhaps one of the most complex and diverse requirements there is – no single customer is the same. Each of us lives, works, learns and plays in a combination of different locations at different times. And while we have routines, our transport needs change depending on the day of the week, the weather, who we are travelling with, our health, and even personal whims. They even change whilst a person is travelling – one senior executive for a transport provider frustratingly explained: “Even the same person can take on different customer personas on the same journey. You'll never please everyone.”
While some people have transport mode choices (“for this journey should I walk, cycle, drive, use a taxi, take the bus or the train?”), others don’t. This division is most obvious between urban and rural settings, and between people with varying levels of mobility and those that can afford choice and those that cannot. The trade-offs for transport providers around the customer being right are more complex – it is not always about customer priorities. Transport has a key role in supporting social mobility and integration.
Challenge industry perspectives with fresh thinking while deploying expert knowledge to inform and test decisions
Nobody sets out with the mission to deliver a disappointing service. However, multiple competing customer interests make it harder to create the consistency needed for confident decision-making around realising the customer vision. As individuals, we naturally struggle with the complexity of the “whole system” and need to build simplicity in our data to create confidence to move forward with decisions. Awareness of infrastructure limitations and the implied unaffordability of realising our vision often means the customer perspective is absent from decision-making. Yet, the complexity of the system should drive infrastructure providers to seek more accurate and diverse perspectives on what customers actually want and need.
Participant reflections
Steve Warrener from Transport for Greater Manchester made a compelling case for introducing fresh perspectives. He highlighted the impact of hiring a customer director with no transport background, who was brought in to bring a fresh perspective and challenge the team’s thinking: “Too often we would miss the needs of a single mother in North Manchester who works two jobs.” This has helped them simplify their view of the customers' hierarchy of needs and create fundamental principles that underpin all their decision-making.
Participants agreed that the sentiment "the customer is always right" remains unachievable if we just try to appease needs. Customers don’t have the context and tools needed to realise their needs in the network. Infrastructure providers are still best placed to interpret needs and translate them into actionable improvements. They possess the most knowledge, best practices, risk profiles, tools, and experience needed to manage the complexity of system thinking. What is needed is commitment in keeping customer voices central to decision-making processes, adapting organisational processes to incorporate customer perspectives more consistently, and empowering teams to make the right technical decisions while removing barriers to keep a steady course in realising the vision.
Collaboration can break down the silos in our infrastructure that limit our ability to solve complex infrastructure challenges.
An additional challenge to transport infrastructure is the siloed nature of the industry. Even seemingly straightforward problems, such as providing secure parking for lorry drivers, require coordination across multiple organisations. These include National Highways, the Department for Transport, local authorities, and parking operators. This particular challenge remains broadly unresolved.
Customers don’t see transport infrastructure as distinct parts and jurisdictions; they experience it as one service and rightfully expect it to work as intended. “We're not good at bringing people together to solve problems” admitted one participant. Our system is arguably designed to strengthen these siloes. For example, our railways present unique challenges where the separation of infrastructure owners from operators means there is no incentive to make changes to the train in order to benefit the track. While rail reform presents an opportunity to overcome this specific challenge, the industry as a whole needs to come closer together. Collaboration is the fastest way to overcome our customers' biggest frustrations.
Collaboration is essential to bridge the gap between the public and private sectors. Both bring valuable experience and expertise needed to deliver an improved service. One member remarked, “A supermarket would never run transport infrastructure the way we do,” emphasising that supermarkets always start with the customer in mind. The challenge, however, is whether the private sector focuses on the customer due to competition or because it is the right thing to do. Working more collaboratively to harness the private sector's ability to respond to customer demands, while ensuring the incentives are in place to deliver the service the “right way,” could be the solution we are seeking.
Moving beyond "Always Right", to a sustainable vision, working with customers to make them happy
Perhaps surprisingly, delivering the “customer is always right” vision doesn’t mean providing a service that never fails. Much of what customers want is simply information – especially when things go wrong. Data shows people are generally understanding about delays if properly communicated. They don't expect perfection; they want information that allows them to adjust their plans and expectations. The roundtable identified services leaving early as the "biggest sin" transport providers can commit.
Perhaps we need to reframe the question entirely. Rather than asking if the customer is always right, should we ask “what makes customers happy?” And in turn what are the levers that are both available and affordable to enable it. What's ultimately needed is a long-term vision that understands transport's role beyond electoral cycles, and that delivers a transport infrastructure that works for most of the users that interface with it. This would enable infrastructure providers to make decisions for the genuine good of customers and the essential services that can be provided rather than aligning with fixed-term priorities.
As our infrastructure faces unprecedented challenges, from climate change to shifting demographics, finding this balance between customer desires and system needs has never been more critical. The customer may not always be right, but keeping their needs at the centre of our thinking is the only way forward.
What should we do next then?
To truly understand and meet the diverse needs of our customers, we must:
Invest in understanding and prioritising customer needs: Engage with all customer segments to identify their genuine needs, not just their wants. This requires, fresh perspectives, continuous engagement and listening to all customer segments, including those less vocal. Use this understanding as a cornerstone to inform decision-making.
Collaborate and integrate fresh perspectives: Put effort into breaking down industry silos and work together with joined-up expertise from the private and public sectors to set the strategy and vision around better enabling what makes the customer happy.
Commit to delivering the vision: Create a long-term strategy that transcends traditional electoral cycles and pressures. Ensure decisions are made for the long-term benefit of users, not just short-term gains, and set up processes and governance to make the customer perspective central across all areas of the business.
By taking these steps, we can move beyond the notion of "always right" and work towards a transport infrastructure that truly serves and satisfies our customers.