Quality Management of Transport Services for Cargo Owners

The article addresses the concept of transport service quality as an essential tool for improving customer focus and the efficiency of rail transport in the implementation of cargo traffic. Issues have been investigated on current reforms going on in the railway transport market with regard to transport service. Valid procedures (both foreign and Russian ones) have been studied on freight owners' evaluating transport service quality including All-Russian Project “Quality Index”. By this method, dynamics of change has been assessed in the fulfillment of basic indices of transport service quality, and causes of their inadequacy to ideal fulfillment have been described. Presented is the transport service quality management system for freight owners. The system is based on combination of natural assessment methods, optimization of quality level and assessment of efficiency of measures to increase the quality level. Based on logics of assuring transport service quality, a sequence has been proposed to analyze the transport quality indices systems: “quality of technical means → quality of operational work → quality of transport service”. Moreover, the quality of a subsequent system is the most objective characteristics of the previous system (systems) quality. It has been concluded that one of the major priorities in development of railway transport is to assure high-level quality of transport service. In addition to the most complete satisfaction of clients with railway transport services, the service quality makes it possible to increase attractiveness of railway companies in the transportation field and is the most important factor of competitiveness and the most promising for development as compared with alternative price factors.