Whilst doing the literature review for my thesis I found lots of information that directed towards the view that annual or similar surveys to determine customer satisfaction were a waste of energy. This, of course, was at the time when the Audit Commission was still expecting local government to do such exercises and spend a lot of taxpayers money doing them.
A new short report from Clicktools supports this view and offers some useful guidance in the process. Whilst Clicktools is very probably a useful tool, it’s not the only way; the main thing being to recognise that feedback regarding a transaction is best gathered by micro-surveys as near as possible to the time of the transaction.
The advice is focused on the private sector but can be easily turned to the public sector processes dealing with clients and citizens not customers.