- :
- 2024 CX5 Akera G25
Before I retired a couple of months ago, my job and my qualifications and background involved business improvement and customer research. Most recently I worked for a local council and managed, 6 years ago, to convince them that they needed to get quantitative feedback annually from residents about their satisfaction with council's delivery of their many services.
They had never done this before, which says something in itself....
The reason I had so much difficulty convincing both executive management and the elected Councillors was because they truly believed that they "knew" residents views - the Councillors in particular because they "got elected and because we have hundreds of residents every year contact us with complaints". "We know residents are not happy".
Executives were afraid that getting quantitative data would confirm what councillors thought, so they resisted.....
Anyway, finally convinced them, arranged a professional survey company, they did a proper representative sample (lets not go into this, just accept that I/the survey company knew what we were dong to get a proper sample).
Our survey "questions" were simply to list about 45 of the most common of council's services, and to ask residents to rate each of them on 2 x 5-point scales: one score to rate the importance of that service, the other to rate their satisfaction with councils delivery of that service. 5 being extremely important/satisfied, and 1 being not at all important/very dissatisfied.
So there was no bias in the questions. A final question asked residents to give an overall satisfaction rating, again using the same 5 point scale.
The results showed a true representation of resident Satisfaction.
I still remember myself and the research company director presenting results of the first survey to Councillors - who were shocked to discover that satisfaction was actually very good nearly across the board. One of them in particular was arrogant enough to get up and say what some others were thinking:
"These these results are rubbish! I know! Because i only ever get complaints from residents!"
When we walked them thru the survey methodolgy and porved beyond doubt that our results were accurate, they did start to accept it but I could see that some still had doubts. I think I finally got thru to them when I said:
"What these results give you is the voice of the silent majority!"
"The ones that are happy rarely call up to say thanks, do they? But here, we've listened to a sample that represents everyone in the community. Not just the ones who have a beef - the squeaky wheels - they are the ones that call you and complain!"
The results in the first year did teach us something important - they showed the Council had about 7% of residents who rated overall satisfaction with Counicls service delivery as 1 or 2 on the 5 point scale. So it initiated a closer analysis of the reasons for lower satisfaction with some services, and gradually, over the following 6 years, that % who rated overall satisfaction with service delivery as 1 or 2 was reduced to about 3%. Those who understand customer data will also know that in any population/customer set, there are at least 3% who will never be satisfied, no matter what. Ever.
My point?
Complaints on forums like this and others cannot be taken as giving anything even remotely close to a realistic picture. They are the squeaky wheels, doing what squeaky wheels will always do.
As the father of quality, W Edwards Deming said "Without data, youre just another person with an opinion".
Im still waiting for xtrailman to get us the UK data.....
They had never done this before, which says something in itself....
The reason I had so much difficulty convincing both executive management and the elected Councillors was because they truly believed that they "knew" residents views - the Councillors in particular because they "got elected and because we have hundreds of residents every year contact us with complaints". "We know residents are not happy".
Executives were afraid that getting quantitative data would confirm what councillors thought, so they resisted.....
Anyway, finally convinced them, arranged a professional survey company, they did a proper representative sample (lets not go into this, just accept that I/the survey company knew what we were dong to get a proper sample).
Our survey "questions" were simply to list about 45 of the most common of council's services, and to ask residents to rate each of them on 2 x 5-point scales: one score to rate the importance of that service, the other to rate their satisfaction with councils delivery of that service. 5 being extremely important/satisfied, and 1 being not at all important/very dissatisfied.
So there was no bias in the questions. A final question asked residents to give an overall satisfaction rating, again using the same 5 point scale.
The results showed a true representation of resident Satisfaction.
I still remember myself and the research company director presenting results of the first survey to Councillors - who were shocked to discover that satisfaction was actually very good nearly across the board. One of them in particular was arrogant enough to get up and say what some others were thinking:
"These these results are rubbish! I know! Because i only ever get complaints from residents!"
When we walked them thru the survey methodolgy and porved beyond doubt that our results were accurate, they did start to accept it but I could see that some still had doubts. I think I finally got thru to them when I said:
"What these results give you is the voice of the silent majority!"
"The ones that are happy rarely call up to say thanks, do they? But here, we've listened to a sample that represents everyone in the community. Not just the ones who have a beef - the squeaky wheels - they are the ones that call you and complain!"
The results in the first year did teach us something important - they showed the Council had about 7% of residents who rated overall satisfaction with Counicls service delivery as 1 or 2 on the 5 point scale. So it initiated a closer analysis of the reasons for lower satisfaction with some services, and gradually, over the following 6 years, that % who rated overall satisfaction with service delivery as 1 or 2 was reduced to about 3%. Those who understand customer data will also know that in any population/customer set, there are at least 3% who will never be satisfied, no matter what. Ever.
My point?
Complaints on forums like this and others cannot be taken as giving anything even remotely close to a realistic picture. They are the squeaky wheels, doing what squeaky wheels will always do.
As the father of quality, W Edwards Deming said "Without data, youre just another person with an opinion".
Im still waiting for xtrailman to get us the UK data.....
Last edited:
