Posted May 13, 4:05 p.m.

Update: May 14, 11:08 a.m.:

CTA's head of Customer Information, Adam Case, e-mailed me back in response to questions about a glitch in the Mystery Shopper survey, i.e.: the No. 134 Stockton/LaSalle Express being MIA from the Mystery Shopper dropdown box (see image below) and the fact that the buses are arranged alphabetically on Mystery Shopper survey, rather than numerically by route.

Here's what Adam said:

"This was a good catch by your writer, the 134 was missing. As of 7 pm, that route is available for mystery shopping. Please apologize to any 134 riders you are in contact with, we definitely want their feedback! I also went through all of the other available routes and did not see any others that were missing, if you have heard of any others could you please let me know As for the listing of bus routes, I believe our goal was to provide the routes in a very accessible format so all riders, even mystery shoppers on a new route for the first time, or new or casual riders, would be able to identify what they were traveling on if they caught only the route name (or in many cases, what street they were traveling on) and not the route number (of course the number is also there for them to identify that way if they prefer). However, this is one I'd definitely be interesting in hearing feedback from your writers about, as we are continuously making improvements both to the mystery shopping program, and to the information we post on our website, and it would be great to hear what people prefer so we can improve accordingly."

Let Adam and his team know what you think of the Mystery Shopper survey and I'll forward them along.  More posts please.

A rider just wrote in to me with a tiny bus bone to pick with the CTA's Mystery Shopper survey. 

Before we get into this, first of all, I commend the agency for introducing Mystery Shopper, a long-overdue program that allows garden-variety riders to secret shop on the system and report their findings -- good and bad-- via an online survey.  Presumably, these findings will result in fixes.  Niiiiiice.

But as the rider points out, it is a bit odd that when you are filling it out, the bus numbers are alphabetically organized by route name...rather than numerically arranged by route number, as it is on the CTA's online bus schedule.  For example, you'd have to go to a dropdown box and select "King Drive-3," rather than 3 King Drive on the bus schedule.

"It seems like they went through the painful exercise of "translating" the existing database of bus routes and never matched the two lists. So much for trying to improve the service..."

Making matters worse, there is a route number missing from the drop down window, as the astute rider pointed out: the No. 134 Stockton/LaSalle. 

Is anyone else mystery shopping for mass transit?  See any mistakes?  Or what tweaks would you like to see to make it easier, more efficient?

A way to save your information on the web would be nice... it's kind of a pain to keep typing in your personal information every time you fill the form out.

I'd also like to actually receive a response whenever I ask a question in that little "is there anything we can answer for you" field. The fact that I've never had a question or comment addressed makes me wonder if anyone is actually listening on the other side.

"GOING PUBLIC" SAYS: Good point about that question field, as well as saving personal info. I'll try and point this out to Adam when next I e-mail/speak with him.

Post a comment