The Connecticut Department of Transportation (CTDOT) has received a first-place award from the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) for the best comprehensive marketing and communications campaign highlighting transit needs. The CTDOT Customer Experience (CX) team spent 2022 gathering feedback and connecting with transit customers and workers around Connecticut. This effort resulted in CTDOT being presented with the 2023 APTA AdWheel Award. CTDOT was one of approximately 50 award recipients out of nearly 300 submissions.
“The CX Team has spent early mornings at train stations and late nights in focus groups over the past year to gather critical feedback from transit users. The team has also thought creatively in order to meet people where they are, from letting riders test out different seats at various bus stops to a meet-and-greet at a Yard Goats game,” said CTDOT Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto. “This team has done incredible work and should be proud. Public feedback is the most important piece in the development of our statewide action plan to improve public transportation. We are honored to have received this award from APTA. Congratulations to the team for their hard work and efforts.”
“We are thrilled to be recognized by APTA for our marketing and communications campaign as part of developing our first Customer Experience Action Plan. I am proud of our in-person outreach, with community events and over 30 pop-up events at bus stops, hubs, and rail stations to meet people where they are and talk to them about their experiences using public transportation,” said CTDOT Customer Experience Transportation Supervising Planner Alicia Leite. “Public transportation is vital to our communities, and enhancing public transportation will make us a more equitable, sustainable, and thriving state.”
The CTDOT Customer Experience Team held more than 25 stakeholder interviews and ten focus groups, conducted a front-line employee survey, and held more than three dozen pop-up events in communities around the state. The Customer Experience Action Plan website also had nearly 10,000 unique visitors who completed over 3,000 online surveys. All this information is being used to develop the first-ever statewide CX Action Plan, which will be released later this spring.
The AdWheel Awards recognize the marketing and communications efforts of APTA’s members. Additionally, the annual awards competition creates a structure to share best practices and raise awareness of the value of public transportation marketing professionals within the industry. CTDOT is also now entered as a finalist for the APTA Grand Prize, which will be announced in October.
For the latest news and updates from the Customer Experience team, visit TransitCX.com.