Introduction

Why Surveys for Agencies?

• Properly designed, they can provide findings that represent the views and conditions of the whole population you serve. Improperly collected customer responses can lead to extremely distorted findings.
• They can provide key information that cannot be obtained from other sources. These include customer ratings of services, citizen opinions on relevant public issues, and changes in their condition that customers perceive after they have completed a service.

Information from surveys can be used for a variety of purposes:

• Assessing customers' views about the quality and effects of agency services;
• Estimating the type and magnitude of needs of various populations within the customer base (e.g., the elderly, youth, the poor, businesses) for various types of services (e.g., social, health, economic, recreational, safety);
• Assessing customer awareness of specific policies and services of the agency;
• Measuring whether changes in service delivery have produced the desired results;
• Obtaining citizen opinions and preferences regarding specific issues, programs, policies, and priorities;
• Giving citizens and businesses a voice. Although surveys do not afford face-to-face communication, they give citizens and businesses a chance to communicate with agency managers;
• Balancing the voices of special interest constituents (who are most likely to write, call, or come to hearings) with viewpoints more representative of the public, or customer group, at large;
• Adding credibility to agency decisions by enabling agency officials to report that customers (citizens) have provided input to the decisions.

This manual provides guidance to agency managers—whether federal, state, or local, public or private—in conducting customer surveys. It addresses such issues as: (1) types of information that can be obtained through surveys; (2) possible categories of respondents; (3) key administrative decisions that managers need to make in undertaking surveys; (4) survey limitations, accuracy, and costs; and (5) ways to analyze findings.

Customer feedback on the quality and outcomes of public services can be obtained in a number of ways:

• Using anecdotal information gathered through casual listening to customers;
• Holding forums, discussion groups, and focus groups¹, in which customers are the participants;
• Collecting and analyzing data on customer complaints;
• Systematic, representative surveys of customers.

This guide addresses only the last. Each of the other models has its advantages and uses. But none can represent the views and experiences of the full population of customers as accurately as soundly constructed customer surveys. Most of the other procedures involve major distortions because the views reflected come only from those who choose to express their opinions (called self-selection bias). For example, only some citizens will complain (or know how to complain) to their agencies, and their views are likely to capture only the tip of the iceberg of citizens' concerns. These other procedures, however, can be used as preliminary steps in helping your agency identify questions/issues to be covered in customer surveys.

A survey can be a one-time effort or a periodic collection of customer feedback. Periodic surveys allow agencies to repeat questions in a series of surveys to measure changes over time. Interest in obtaining regular performance information for agency use has greatly intensified in recent years. Enthusiasm for total quality management (TQM), for example, has considerably increased the focus on regular measures of customer satisfaction. Two recent federal initiatives have added to the momentum. The U.S. Congress passed the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, requiring all major federal programs to annually track the outcomes of their programs and encouraging a customer focus. And presidential Executive Order 12862 ("Setting Customer Service Standards," September 11, 1993) calls for periodic surveys of customers of individual federal programs.

A number of state legislatures are requiring state agencies and programs to provide annual customer-oriented performance information. Many local governments are doing the same. These agencies are finding that customer feedback is an important source of information for tracking customer needs, preferences, and performance.

In the private sector, donors have pressed nonprofit organizations, such as United Ways, to provide evidence that donations have produced beneficial outcomes. A number of United Ways are encouraging service agencies they help fund to implement regular customer feedback programs to gauge client satisfaction². Other national service organizations, accreditation organizations, and community foundations have also begun to develop procedures to track the results of service expenditures—procedures that rely heavily on customer surveys.

That sound sampling techniques can enable agencies to collect reasonably precise information from a relatively small number of respondents is surprising to some. Samples of 1,000, 500, or even fewer, for example, can provide sufficient precision for many, if not most, survey uses. (Gallup and Harris polls, for example, normally survey about 1,600 persons to represent nationwide opinion.)

This Guide's Audience and Scope

This material is addressed to all levels of managers and supervisors—persons who are likely to be major initiators and users of customer surveys. These are the officials who make the crucial decisions about whether and how customer surveys will be used. To make these decisions wisely, managers and supervisors do not need to know all the technical details of questionnaire design, sample selection, and statistical analysis. But they do need to know enough about the survey process to make informed judgments about surveys and their use.

The word "customer" is used broadly. The focus of customer surveys usually is on individual citizens or households (both those who have used the services and those who are potential users). However, customers of a service might be other public or private organizations, such as other levels of government or businesses. Managers of internal administrative type services (such as purchasing, personnel, building maintenance, fleet maintenance, and information technology) should also consider conducting periodic surveys of the agency personnel supported by these offices. These are also customers.

Organization of This Guide

1. Focus groups have become a popular way to obtain information from customer groups. The way they are formed and the number of persons involved usually preclude their use for generating representative data on the populations they supposedly represent, however.