City of Ballarat to conduct quarterly Community Satisfaction Surveys

Ballarat residents may receive a call in the coming weeks asking for their feedback relating to their satisfaction with the City of Ballarat’s services.

Independent survey provider JWS research performed the annual community satisfaction survey on behalf of the City of Ballarat earlier this year. However, the City of Ballarat is shifting to a model in which the results of the survey are determined quarterly instead of one annual survey.  

Each quarter, 200 residents will be surveyed. The results from each round of surveys will be compiled into an annual summary, presented at a Council Meeting mid 2024 and loaded to the website, as in previous years.

The next round of surveys will begin on Thursday 17 August and will end on Sunday 17 September.  

The community satisfaction survey has been designed to assess the performance of the City of Ballarat across a range of measures to identify areas for improvement or more effective service delivery to residents.

Independent survey provider JWS Research will continue to conduct the surveys. JWS Research is commonly used in local government and provides comparable benchmarking information to undertake the Community Satisfaction Survey.  

The survey is a proactive, outbound survey — meaning that survey respondents will be contacted by phone.

If you are contacted and asked to participate in the survey, you can ensure the call is legitimate and not a scam call by noting the following:  

• The surveyor will never ask for people by name, they do not have access to residents’ names.  
• They will identify themselves as representing National Field Services (the organisation making the survey calls on behalf of JWS Research) and introduce themselves by name. For example, Mark from National Field Services. 
• The caller will specify how long the call is expected to take.  
• Calls will come from a number with the following prefix: (03) 9977. This may change during future surveys. However, calls will never come from a mobile number.  

All details and individual responses are confidential. Only the overall results are shared with the City of Ballarat.

City of Ballarat Mayor Cr Des Hudson said the community satisfaction survey offered Council an opportunity to understand community perceptions of the City of Ballarat.

“We are working hard to ensure ratepayers are getting value for money in terms of the services, facilities and projects the City of Ballarat provides to the community,” he said.  

“Across the organisation, we’re taking concrete steps to improve services and processes for our community. However, the community satisfaction survey gives us an opportunity to evaluate how we are tracking.” 

For more information about the community satisfaction surveys, contact the City of Ballarat Customer Service team by calling (03) 5320 5500.  

To view previous survey results, visit the Community Satisfaction Survey page on the City of Ballarat website.