LGProcast · Local Government Professionals Inc

LGProcast - Episode 25 - How Community Satisfaction Surveys are Changing

·17 min·1 clip

Klein proposes naming three state-controlled roads so residents can rate the roads councils actually manage.

1. LGProcast examines changes to Victoria's community satisfaction survey process after a 2023 review involving LG Pro and LGV. 2. Simon Edwards, managing partner at Klein, and senior researcher Tom McKay explain how Klein gathered council feedback after winning the state government-endorsed contract. 3. The episode asks how the Community Satisfaction Survey can become a useful decision tool instead of a compulsory box-ticking exercise. 4. Tom McKay says councils consistently described the long-running survey program as stale and in need of review, refresh, and enhancement. 5. Klein is replacing the previous telephone-only methodology with an online survey component to reach younger and more varied demographic groups. 6. Telephone interviewing remains part of the design so results retain some consistency with historical data collected over roughly 15 years. 7. Klein reviewed the wording of core questions and the catalogue of optional questions to improve relevance for individual councils. 8. Simon Edwards says the tender requirements already reflected feedback from LG Pro members and LGV's review of council concerns. 9. Klein wants survey results to help councils improve services and customer experience rather than simply satisfy compulsory reporting requirements. 10. The reporting redesign will include detailed information alongside one-page infographic summaries that more council employees can use. 11. Edwards says community perception matters even when a resident has not used the service being assessed. 12. Klein plans to separate customer-experience feedback from broader reputation and communications issues involving people who know about council services. 13. The survey design accounts for vocal residents whose responses may be shaped by a planning issue, missed bin collection, or another unresolved outcome. 14. Klein heard widespread concern about confusion between council roads and state-government roads during its initial council meetings. 15. Each council can nominate three roads outside its responsibility so respondents understand which local roads they should evaluate. 16. Additional open-ended questions and conversational follow-ups will ask why respondents gave a rating and request details such as street names. 17. Klein's text-analytics tools are intended to extract usable themes from large volumes of verbatim comments during reporting. 18. Simon Edwards and Tom McKay frame survey analysis as support for existing council strategies rather than an instruction to abandon current priorities. 19. Council executives seeking practical survey design and reporting changes will find the episode most relevant. 20. Listeners uninterested in local government performance measurement may find the council-specific methodology focus too narrow.

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