Analysis of the techniques used by public transport operators for evaluating perceived service quality | [Analisi delle tecniche utilizzate dalle aziende di trasporto pubblico italiane per valutare la qualità percepita dei servizi offerti]

The evaluation of transit service quality is an aspect of considerable importance for both authorities and operators providing public transport services, as improving the quality of the offered service aims to attract an ever-increasing number of users. In recent years, the measure of service quality has become a common practice in the public transport sector. However, defining and measuring transit service quality is quite complex because of the variety of aspects characterising it. For local and government authorities and public transport operators, a comprehensive measure of service quality is represented by the quality perceived by users that can be detected through the well-known Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSS). Despite the usefulness of the CSS, at present there is not a guideline containing the various methodologies to carry out user satisfaction surveys according to the fixed objectives and to the context where the transport service is supplied. This work aims to analyse and compare the methods for the development of CSS applied by a sample of public transport companies operating in different contexts throughout Italy. The analysis of the content of the interviews allowed the elements most affecting the planning and implementation of the investigations and the process of analysis of the collected data to be detected.