This post was written and submitted by Matt Dixon. If you would like to submit a guest post, please click here.
Two facts are true: 1) Perception is Reality. Whether you are a private company or a governmental entity, customer/resident perception is reality. and 2) You cannot change what you cannot measure.
As leaders of organizations we can't change what we can't measure. So how do we measure public perception and know that our organization is truly meeting our customer/resident's expectations?
BOY SCOUTS HELP TO BUILD A SURVEY PANEL
For the past three years South Weber City has been using Qualtrics to gather important information on how our residents perceive the quality of the services we provide as a municipality. One challenge has been to develop a true representative sample survey panel. Our most recent efforts to build a representative survey panel has employed the assistance of several boy scouts in the community. South Weber randomly selected three hundred and fifteen homes in the community to be a part of the city's Community Survey Panel. With the assistance of several boy scout troops each one of the three hundred and fifteen homes is being contacted and invited to participate as members of the city's survey panel.
The boy scouts will be collecting email addresses from those homes willing to participate. The only commitment from each home is that they agree to complete the surveys as they are emailed to their homes throughout the year. By doing this the city will be able to decrease the margin of error in our community surveys from its current interval of 8 down to 5. This will greatly improve the reliability of the information the city uses to guide both policy and operational decisions.
By gathering and measuring public perception we are better able to meet our organization's mission to improve the quality of life for our residents. Thanks Qualitrics.
Matt Dixon is the City Manager of South Weber City, Utah.
www.southwebercity.com
BA in Psychology, Weber State University MPA, Brigham Young University