Highways Agency - Safe roads, Reliable journeys, Informed travellers

Customer Engagement

Road users' satisfaction

Our commitment to seek and respond to feedback from our customers is shown through our national and area road users' satisfaction surveys, which are carried out throughout the year. The National Road Users' Satisfaction Survey involves around 2,000 people annually who are interviewed at their own homes. It provides the results for our key performance indicator for road user satisfaction as well as other important information about how our customers use our network and services.
Satisfaction levels were measured across our three core objectives:

• journey time reliability and congestion
• safety
• environment

In 2008-09 we changed the way we measure improvements in road users' satisfaction. Although performance improved over the course of the year we fell slightly short of achieving our target.

Stakeholder satisfaction

During 2008-09 we conducted a stakeholder satisfaction survey to obtain feedback on how the Agency performs in partnership working. We have continued to develop our network of stakeholder account managers and focal points specialists to ensure that stakeholder feedback is cascaded to all areas of the business.
We have entered formal collaborative working arrangements with two key stakeholders and are continuing to develop further arrangements.

Road Users' and Environment Committees

To assist the Highways Agency in developing a more customer oriented approach to our business we host two focused stakeholder committees, the National Road Users' Committee and the National Environment Committee. These include representatives from our main customer organisations: road users, industry, and statutory and non-statutory environmental groups. Both committees are chaired by our Chief Executive. The meetings allow us to engage with stakeholders at a senior level, set out the rationale behind our work, facilitate two-way dialogue, and lead to increased stakeholder support. As an indicator of the levels of importance we attach to cultivating healthy stakeholder relationships, we have this year increased the number of these meetings to six per annum.

We operate a similar arrangement at regional level, providing a channel for the discussion of local operational and environmental issues directly with the Highways Agency.

Customer Promise

As part of moving the Agency forward we have developed our Customer Promise following discussions with our customers, stakeholders, staff and suppliers. The dialogue generated the following statements that set out the key features of our services to customers simply and clearly.

• We will help you make your journeys safely and reliably
• We will provide value for money and invest in improved services
• We will provide helpful information to enable you to make choices before and during your journey
• We will clear up incidents quickly and safely
• We will limit any delays when carrying out roadworks and improvements
• We will play our part in protecting the environment
• We will ask you for your views and act on feedback
• We will deal with you promptly, courteously and helpfully

Since introducing the Customer Promise in 2007 we have made significant progress in embedding its ethos with staff, suppliers and stakeholders by:

• Holding a series of roadshows with our staff;
• Explaining our role to stakeholders using the DVD 'A day in the life of the Highways Agency', and
• Building the Customer Promise into the development of a contractors' charter setting out the commitments we expect our strategic suppliers to sign up to.

But our challenge remains to complete this process.

Customer beacon network

To improve our understanding of our customers' needs we use a network of Customer Beacons representing teams in the business areas of the Highways Agency. Beacons act as the 'eyes and ears' of the Agency, gathering feedback from our customers and stakeholders, and reporting and sharing this information by means of our quarterly Customer Feedback report. The report summarises our customers' concerns, and what action we have taken in response.

As a result of feedback we make changes across the full range of our activities, from the way we provide services, and communicate with customers, to revising internal processes and policies, and commissioning research.

Our website contains a customer feedback section for comments. We also publish copies of the feedback reports for information.