In the long-ago past, councils didn't care much about customer service. Their 'customers' were captive ratepayers who had zero choice in who provided services in their municipality. You paid your rates and hoped that you received adequate services for your needs.
These days we are still captive to our council, but we have many more ways to communicate our needs and to express our satisfaction (or dissatisfaction). Access to council officers via online channels is now routine, we have social media to express our views and councillors can be contacted directly be email and phone.
As a consequence, many councils now have a Customer Service Charter (sometimes called a Customer Experience Strategy). The City of Port Phillip's is one page, other councils have up to a 37 page brochure with detailed commitments to ratepayers. The Victorian Government now requires that all councils conduct an annual Customer Satisfaction Survey, and the City of Port Phillip participates in a detailed survey that measures some 18 services and apparently samples only 900 people out of 89,500 (over 18) in 2023.
The services include: Art centres & libraries, Recreational facilities, Waste management, Community & cultural, Appearance of public areas, Environmental sustainability, Elderly support services, Sealed local roads, Slashing & weed control, Bus/community dev./tourism, Informing the community, Local streets & footpaths, Traffic management, Consultation & engagement, Planning & building permits, Community decisions, Lobbying, Population growth. It's a little hard to understand how the last two of these are measures of council performance.
The challenge we face is that councils often confuse 'service delivery' with 'customer service'. We recently met with CoPP CEO Chris Carroll and his team and were impressed with the computer system 'dashboard' which enables council officers to monitor weekly levels of service completions. This is important, but it is not a measure of customer satisfaction (despite the frequent use of the word 'satisfaction'). We did note that they also track the levels of service requests and complaints being lodged by residents.
The system appears not to be measuring how satisfied the residents (and businesses) in the municipality are with the 'customer service' they receive when they interact with council. In fact, the survey mentioned above has only one question about customer service: Q5c. Thinking of the most recent contact, how would you rate Port Phillip City Council for customer service? Please keep in mind we do not mean the actual outcome but rather the actual service that was received.
In my view, the only way to assess the true level of customer service (from interactions with council) is to ask as many residents and businesses, their opinion.
That's why RoPP has just launched its own survey. From today, we'll be delivering 40,000 flyers to homes and businesses asking for your opinion on City of Port Phillip's customer service. There are 16 questions to be answered online that should only take you a few minutes. Your responses will be private.
We intend to publish the aggregated results to everyone, including councillors and council officers. Our motive is to gain a more realistic measure of customer service that should inform council for the future. We look forward to hearing your opinions.
COMPLETE SURVEY HERE
Contact mail@ropp.org.au for any enquiries
