Why and How to Use Customer Opinions: A Quality-of-Life and Customer Satisfaction-Oriented Foundation for Performance-Based Decision-Making
The concepts of ‘customer satisfaction’ (CS) and ‘quality of life’ (QOL) have both been used, on a limited basis, in strategic planning and performance measurement at state departments of transportation. However, the meanings and usefulness of these concepts
are still unclear or evolving to many practitioners. Based on a review of the literature and customer opinion data collected for various transportation studies in the USA and Europe, this paper offers two important contributions to the transportation literature. The paper clarifies the relationship
between the CS and QOL concepts, placing CS in the broader context of customer opinions and subjective well-being. The paper then identifies six categories of survey tools for collecting customer opinions, describing how each can be used within a performance management framework to reveal
the QOL impacts of transportation decisions. Agencies can use the definitions, conceptual relationships, performance measures, and decision-making processes discussed in this paper to refine their performance management programs, to better understand customer and public perceptions, and to
make systematic progress toward their QOL oriented goals.
Keywords: customer satisfaction; performance management; performance measurement; quality of life; survey data
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 790 Atlantic Drive, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA
Publication date: 02 January 2014
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