Resident's give Council the thumbs up

Posted by Nelson City Council on 8 August 2011

Nelson residents are pretty pleased with both their lot and Council facilities and services, according to the latest survey of residents and a customer service survey taken at public counters.

While the residents survey covered a variety of areas, the counter surveys at Civic House and Nelson Public Libraries focussed purely on customer service.

The residents’ survey shows marked increases in satisfaction with the city’s parks open spaces and recreation facilities, which all rated highly, while 22% more residents agree Council is doing a better job than last year. Four percent thought Council was doing a worse job, while 63% thought the performance was neither better nor worse.

The net promoter score for customer service was 66% last year and increased to 84% this year. Council Chief Executive Keith Marshall says the results are a wonderful response to the additional effort Council staff have made. “Our focus over the past 18 months has been on lifting customer service and satisfaction and for Council to be the best it can be. The results show our efforts are working.”

Nelson Mayor Aldo Miccio agrees. “Our residents are telling us Council’s performance is continuing to improve and so is their level of satisfaction. In these tough economic times, 43% agree or strongly agreed with the statement that Council provides good value for money. That’s a rise of 7 percentage points from last year, while those who had neither agreed nor disagreed dropped by 10 percentage points. This means more people are forming opinions, and they’re for the better.”

The Council has been using surveys since 1998 to measure public satisfaction with its work and it looks at a wide range of issues facing Nelson. Key Research carried out the phone interviews in May with 400 randomly selected residents.

The Customer Service surveys began in 2009.  This year 308 customers were polled face to face at Civic House and at Nelson Public Libraries.