07/02/2003

Customer Service Survey

The biannual customer service survey for MTAS is done and the results are in. All our numbers are up! The results are very good and demonstrate how important we all feel about providing excellent customer service.

Every two years IPS contracts with the Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) on campus to conduct a customer service survey. This was the fifth survey since 1995. We sent them a list of everyone we had worked with in the last two years. That's all the names from project reporting and, since we included some questions about training, everyone who had attended an MTAS class. SSRI randomly selected 600 names to receive the survey and made two follow-up mailings. The response rate was 55% which is high for a normal survey but low compared to our previous ones. I think the difference was caused by adding the names of people from our classes who may not have had much interaction with us other than attending one class.

You'll see on page 1 that all our numbers have increased. Several categories had gone down between 1999 and 2001 or even since 1997, but they have all moved back up. The top of page 2 has the conclusions that SSRI draws from the data. Following that are the detailed findings with the questions about training starting on page 6. A summary of the demographics of the city officials who completed the survey is on page 8.

Finally, there are some very interesting and mostly very complementary comments beginning on page 10. The survey form included an open ended question for city officials to comment about anything.

Thanks for providing the excellent service that made these survey results possible.

PS. I have the data set if anyone wants to look at it more closely with SPSS. The data set does not include the identities of who filled out the survey or made the comments.