Customers give the thumbs up to Arriva services – again!

Customers across Arriva's UK Bus businesses have given aresounding thumbs up to their services, with 89 per cent of peopleindicating that Arriva was hitting the mark with local buses.

An independent NOP survey, which in size and scope isunprecedented in the bus industry, covered all aspects ofcustomers' journey experience, from waiting at the bus stop,through boarding the bus and buying a ticket, to the journeyitself. Eighty-eight per cent of customers were satisfied with theaccessibility of the company's buses and 91 per cent were satisfiedwith the ease of buying a ticket.

Employees also did well, with NOP indicating that the positiveratings customers surveyed gave to Arriva employees are within thetop 20 per cent of companies that NOP has rated.

Arriva says that the research has been highly successful ininforming the company which features of the journey experience aremost important to its customers, and how well it measures up topeople's expectations. The survey follows on from similar researchundertaken by NOP in 2003.

Catherine Mason, customer services and marketing director forArriva's UK Bus division, said:

Clearly we're delighted with the results, and aredetermined to keep working hard for our customers. We know that tomake bus travel more appealing to as wide a variety of people aspossible, that we need to keep delivering improvements – andwe're committed to doing just that.

We're extremely proud of our employees – ourpeople work very hard to deliver quality bus services and I have tosay that these results reflect the hard work they putin.

Bus drivers employed by Arriva are all offered training incustomer service and are able to further their training by takingup NVQs in customer care, with full support from the company.

Ends

Notes to editors

• NOP Research Group is part of NOP World, one of the world'slargest market research and business information companies,offering both custom and syndicated research, as well asresearch-based consulting, and analytic CRM services around theworld.
• The research was carried out in England, excluding London, inOctober 2004 and involved over 17,500 people. The survey was basedon similar criteria set for the 2003 survey.
• One in four customers surveyed were travelling for shopping, 50per cent were employed, 17 per cent retired. Eighty-seven per centused the bus at least once a week and 44 per cent use the bus mostdays.