BeHeardPhilly Helps City Conduct Polling on Customer Service

Are You lot Satisfied?

In a series of surveys with Temple's BeHeardPhilly, the metropolis wants to notice out. Sign up to take role—and peradventure fifty-fifty alter your metropolis

Jun. xiv, 2016

When's the last fourth dimension anyone in metropolis government asked you what you lot think of their functioning? Or for your suggestions on how they could practice better?

If you're like almost Philadelphians, it's probably been….well, never. Later on all, information technology often feels like the but time our metropolis officials intendance nigh what we think is when we're in the midst of an ballot—and only and then on the rare occasion that there's an actual contested race.

But with the assist of Temple University'due south Institute for Survey Research, the Kenney assistants has started to ask just these sorts of questions of its customers—all of us—with the intention, the assistants says, of improving customer service in city government.

First, in the spring, the Streets Department deputed a poll from ISR's BeHeardPhilly on what Philadelphians know about traffic laws in the city. That information will inform an outreach campaign to, as the department put it when commissioning the study, "brand Philadelphia a more walkable, bikeable, driveable urban center that is attainable and safe for all route users."

Now, The Citizen and BeHeardPhilly are launching a new survey to judge how much Philadelphians know and care about poverty in the city.

This calendar month, the H2o Department is including an insert into every h2o bill telling customers how to take a poll about its services. That survey, available at phlwatersurvey.com and later through BeHeardPhilly, will ask customers to rank their satisfaction in issues ranging from how good the water tastes, to how easy information technology is to pay their bill, to how well PWD's customer service department answers questions. The results will then be used to inform changes to the way the section serves its customers.

And starting this summer, a new city bureau—the Mayor'south Office for Performance Management—will put out a Citizen Satisfaction Survey, request Philadelphians to charge per unit an assortment of city services, across several departments, and suggest ways to make improvements. This broad-ranging poll will serve as a baseline from which the Kenney administration will determine how well it's doing with the people who matter most—citizens. "It'south a total frontal approach to engaging citizens and getting feedback," says Liza Rodriguez, director of the Office for Performance Management. "We're trying to get an overall sense of what's important to citizens on various measures, and to really connect with them."

The survey, and the work of Performance Management, is part of a national move to brand more than and better data-based decisions. (Mayor Nutter did a version of this, with PhillyStat.) Since the start of Kenney's term, Rodriguez's department has been working with metropolis departments to set performance goals—picking up a certain per centum of trash on time, for example; it volition then collect data to make up one's mind how shut they are to meeting those goals. Customer satisfaction is ane cistron that volition get in to judging success. Rodriguez says this yr'south wide survey volition exist followed by small focus groups, likewise run by ISR, that dive deeper into issues, and that the city will conduct a new satisfaction survey each year to gauge how well it'southward doing. Performance Management will also eventually take a website that allows citizens to search by department, to see how shut they are to meeting their goals. (Rodriguez says Baltimore has a similar model in place already that includes the results of customer feedback surveys.)

The ability to collect quick and widespread denizen opinion is the beauty of BeHeardPhilly, an ambitious polling project that aims to enlist x,000 Philadelphians, from every demographic, to participate in surveys several times a year through email, text or phone. The city's partnership with BeHeardPhilly fits precisely the goal of the project—non just to capture the mood of citizens, but to enable change.

"This is non inquiry for the sake of research," says Nina Hoe, BeHeardPhilly study director.  "The signal of BeHeardPhilly is to brand Philadelphia a ameliorate place to alive. Nosotros want to give officials the information to brand that happen."

So far, BeHeardPhilly has conducted a handful of polls, including—with The Citizen and several other partners–a soda tax survey that showed overwhelming support for Mayor Kenney'south proposal. (At least when citizens thought the coin was going to fund universal pre-1000.) Now, The Citizen and BeHeardPhilly are launching a new survey to gauge how much Philadelphians know and care virtually poverty in the city. If you have already signed up for BeHeardPhilly, watch for the poll in your inbox. If not, sign upward here to be heard on this, and on other issues facing the city.

Will whatsoever of this make a departure to the everyday lives of Philadelphians? It's hard to say. But information technology's even harder to make changes if you don't starting time know what needs changing.

"It'due south so cool that our metropolis is taking this on," says Hoe. "Not every city cares enough to ask their residents what they think. Permit'south help them out by answering their questions."

Photo header: Rian Watkin/BeHeardPhilly

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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/beheardphilly-poverty-poll/

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