Local governments struggle to balance scarce resources with service level improvements. With high-quality citizen satisfaction metrics, communities can use solid data to support resource allocation decisions, improve planning, measure progress, preserve tax-base, and build public trust.

The Cobalt Citizen Satisfaction Survey is a proven and cost-effective tool to measure, manage, monitor, and communicate the satisfaction of your citizens.

The survey is powered by the patented technology of the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (http://theacsi.org), the "gold-standard" of customer satisfaction metrics for both government and private sectors. Used by many Fortune 500 companies, the ACSI measures over two-thirds of the GDP and produces scores for more than 100 federal government agencies. Because the index is a trusted independent assessment, the credibility of the data is unmatched.

The Cobalt Citizen Satisfaction Survey Benefits:

• Evaluate current citizen satisfaction, expectations, and priorities
• Identify high-impact, high-yield improvement opportunities
• Discover attributes that make up your community's "brand" 
• Inform and support resource allocation decisions
• Measure and benchmark progress

Local Governments Should Ask:

• What services and interactions do citizens value most and least?
• What are our strengths and weaknesses?
• Are resources aligned with services citizens value?
• How do we measure up to the public and private organizations our citizens compare us to?
• How do we measure up to similar organizations?
• How can we manage public perceptions and employee morale to build greater community trust?

The program includes a core survey sent to the residents of a community plus comparison to other communities, the broader public sector, and the private sector.

The program uses the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) methodology, which was developed by the National Quality Research Center (NQRC) at the Stephen M. Ross Business School at the University of Michigan.

The Cobalt Citizen Satisfaction Survey uses sets of standard questions to assess citizen opinions about basic services and community life. As an option, you can add customized questions to meet your unique needs.

The Cobalt Citizen Satisfaction Survey Includes:

• Core survey
• Cover letter
• Two mailings to a random sample of up to 1,500 contacts that you have provided using the standard format: an initial mailing of the survey and a second mailing of the survey to non-responders
• Link to your Web site to allow online response
• Data entry of survey results
• Cross-tabulation by age, gender, income, home ownership, ethnicity, years of residence, and education
• Access to a secure, online portal that lets you review results, compare yourself with a variety of national and local peer groups, and download tables into MS Excel
• Technical assistance in understanding the results by phone and e-mail
• Entry to win national accreditation in the Great Communities Program
• Access to lessons learned by Great Communities Program participants
  
  

Additional Options:

• Creation of a mailing/e-mail list in place of an electronic, participant-provided list
• Spanish-language version of survey
• Additional custom questions with supplemental report
• Supplemental mailings
• Phone-based survey
• Onsite presentation of results
• Paper report
• Follow-up research including focus groups or custom follow-up surveys

Cobalt Great Communities Program

The Great Communities Program recipients are announced each year by Cobalt Community Research for governments who meet established service targets based on the results of the Cobalt Citizen Satisfaction Survey. The annual recipients are identified among all the governments that participated in the previous year’s survey.

Accreditation is based on overall survey ratings as follows:

• Gold level accreditation: 90+ overall satisfaction
• Silver level accreditation: 80-89 overall satisfaction
• Bronze level accreditation: 70-79 overall satisfaction

Timeline

Cobalt conducts survey rounds on a monthly basis. Once a participating government provides Cobalt with an electronic contact list in the standard template, the survey is completed and results are posted online six weeks after survey round is released. The process is faster if the survey is conducted by e-mail.

For More Information

For more information and to learn how your community can use the Cobalt Citizen Satisfaction Survey, send an e-mail to wsaintamour@cobaltcommunityresearch.org.