Meeting customer and community needs
Aim
Providing a transport network centred on what our customers need and value.
Approach
- Understand our customers’ and the communy’s needs and how to address them
- Deliver consistent, timely and accurate communications
- Demonstrate a proactive, whole-of-government approach to transport outcomes
Target 90%
Community satisfaction with Main Roads is within target with a slight decrease from last year
Target 5% Increase
We experienced an increase in the number of recipients to our project update emails, this is despite sending fewer project updates.
Target 80%
The target for resolving enquires at first point of contact with our customer information centre was achieved
Looking ahead
Projects and activities planned for next financial year include:
- Delivering actions from our digital communication strategy to support the Digital Strategy for the Western Australian Government 2021 - 2025
- Improving accessibility of our digital platforms and information
- Implementing learnings from a pilot planning study approach to recognise and address customer needs through early and sustained engagement
- Promoting awareness and general safety messaging for real-time traffic operations
- Improving and further future proofing customer and stakeholder data in our customer relationship management system
Pumping under Tonkin Gap
- Creation of a new pump track, mountain bike skills area and a canoe landing facility
- Family friendly all abilities space
- Includes a yarning circle and Aboriginal artwork recognising Whadjuk Noongar culture
A barren area under the widened Mooro-Beeloo Bridge (formerly Redcliffe Bridge), on the City of Bayswater side, has been revitalised with a new BMX pump track and mountain bike skills facility for people of all ages and abilities to enjoy.
The family friendly space includes a pump track with a looped sequence of humps and banked turns, a mountain bike skills area dedicated to riders developing specific off-road bike handling skills and a canoe landing.
Early in Tonkin Gap Project ‘s lifecycle, an opportunity to enhance this area as a community amenity was identified.
The area is of great significance to the Whadjuk Noongar people and a comprehensive consultation process was undertaken with key stakeholders, the local community and the project’s Traditional Owner Working Group during the works and design for this space.
Aboriginal culture and history have been incorporated into the design including a yarning circle, Whadjuk revegetation planting, traditional artwork and the preservation of two scar trees identified during the heritage survey at the start of the project.
Principal Project Director Rob Arnott said it is not often a community activation facility can be delivered as part of a large infrastructure project. From initial discussions with the City of Bayswater on developing this space, to consulting with over 700 community members, it was clear that the locals wanted this space converted into a family-friendly area.
People can easily access the area from the principal shared path built as part of the project and the allweather facility has showcased opportunities to turn underutilised spaces into active ones. Since officially opening in April 2024, the facility has been used and enjoyed by hundreds of people.
Listening to our customers
We are continuing to deliver unprecedented works across the state and while our road network is extensive, we recognise that our community is just as diverse. Building strong relationships with both the community and businesses is crucial for delivering our services.
To achieve this, we have developed tailored stakeholder and engagement programs to keep the community informed about upcoming projects and works, address local traffic issues, promote road safety education, and foster dialogue around major infrastructure projects and future road planning. This approach ensures our work is guided from planning to delivery, balancing technical and safety requirements while meeting the needs and desires of our community. We encourage community participation in decision-making through the My Say Transport online portal, and our strong digital presence offers continuous collaboration and real-time project updates.
We use our centralised customer relationship management system to share project information and promote avenues to stay informed on our projects. Just over 54 000 people use this system to stay connected and last year we issued more than 440,000 project updates via e-mail. Early engagement helps us to build relationships and gather insights that enable us to deliver a transport network that reflects what our customers need and value.
Community perception survey
Our annual Community perception survey allows us to gather critical insights into customer experiences across Western Australia. This feedback helps us plan and deliver the services and future projects that keep WA moving. Following are the results from the last three years.
It is pleasing to see that although satisfaction remains high across the board and the results remain consistent with previous years we have seen a turn around in relation to maintenance following the low result last year. To learn more about our performance, visit the ‘Our community’ page on our website.
| AREA OF SATISFACTION | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall performance | 89 | 88 | 89 |
| Road safety | 91 | 89 | 90 |
| Provision of cycleways and pedestrian facilities | 88 | 86 | 88 |
| Road maintenance | 85 | 82 | 85 |
| Sustainability | 88 | 86 | 87 |
| Environmental management | 88 | 87 | 88 |
Multicultural action plan
We aim to identify new ideas and extend the work we do to create an inclusive environment meeting the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse employees and communities. We developed a range of actions to foster diversity in consultation with our customers, stakeholders and employees and during the year completed a further 22 actions. In the coming year we are looking to launch a new integrated plan in conjunction with our Transport Portfolio colleagues. An outline of our plan is available on our website.
Disability access and inclusion plan
We are committed to providing information in ways that are meaningful and useful to people with disability. The Transport Portfolio Disability Access and Inclusion Plan 2022 – 2027 (DAIP) includes strategies to improve access, inclusion and opportunities for people with disability, their families and carers and is supported by our own implementation plan. To see the Transport Portfolio DAIP visit our website.
Customer feedback
We value customer feedback and regularly investigate trends and issues that provide us with insights for improving our business areas. If a customer has a complaint or feedback, we use an accessible, fair and equitable process that meets the International Standard for Guidelines for Complaints Handling (ISO 10002- 2018). Guided by these Feedback and Complaint Handling Principles, we aim to deliver high quality experiences during every interaction.
Complaints and fault reports
This year we received 4,869 complaints with the highest area of concern being traffic signals, followed by road works. 65% of all complaints fell into one of the following ten categories.
| CATEGORY | % CASES |
|---|---|
| Traffic Signals | 35% |
| Road Works | 14% |
| Road Surface | 8% |
| Damage | 7% |
| Speed Limits | 7% |
| Noise | 7% |
| Signs | 6% |
| Safety Issues | 6% |
| Line Marking | 5% |
| Traffic Management | 5% |
Many customers make contact to report faults, providing valuable assistance to the challenging task of continuously improving the condition and appearance of our road network. Last year we received 20,631 fault reports. The top fault type reported was for traffic signals.
Customer information centre
Our Customer Information Centre (CIC) plays an important role in state-wide incident response and management by providing timely and accurate information to our customers and the community. While call volumes have increased slightly over the past year, we are continuing to see that our efforts to promote and provide other forms of accessing information continue to provide new options for customers to obtain information in a timely manner. The percentage increase in time taken for interactions, would be linked to the impact of additional reporting of interactions received via our web forms. It is pleasing to see that the confidence in the information via our self-service option has increased with only 9% of those customers opting to be transferred to a CIC operator.
| CUSTOMER CONTACT STATISTICS | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Telephone calls | 42,419 | 46,350 | 47,675 |
| Calls self-serviced | 13,530 | 13,219 | 14,475 |
| Email enquiries | 62,428 | 60,716 | 48,441 |
| Total phone and email enquiries | 104,847 | 107,066 | 125,114 |
| Increase total interaction percentage | -34% | +2% | +16% |
Digital channels
Digital communication continues to be an effective and cost-efficient way to communicate with our customers and the community. As more and more of us engage online, we are dedicated to developing efficient, customer-centric approaches to improve our communications whilst respecting individuals’ privacy.
