CityPOV: Community Engagement Survey

Our experience with decision-makers at some of the biggest and smartest companies in the world has given us experience and skill to solve difficult problems with research. When our first city approached us for help and loved what we delivered with CityPOV, we found a new passion.  We have chosen to make a difference and bring our expertise to the public sector to help city leaders make a difference.

Experience.  We are experts in survey design and in solving problems for demanding clients.  The skill set we’ve developed allows us to solve things that couldn’t be addressed by well-meaning people who haven’t had that experience.

Most city surveys are a tangle of questions designed by committee.  Most are either too simplistic or are fatiguing for residents who take them. Many are myopic on certain issues, trying to prove an internal opinion.  Others are so broad they are not useful.

OnPointe Insights designs surveys that are intuitive and fast for residents to take, and yet provide a maximum of information for a city—that’s the core difference. We design CityPOV with the final analysis and a dashboard in mind.  You can easily view results and efficiently monitor trends over time. Plus, our costs are reasonable because of the thoughtful design of CityPOV.

Our site has helpful information for those who choose to go DIY.  We hope our information is helpful and are glad to help you even if you don’t choose our solutions.  That said, consider the full costs of DIY.  Is your survey unbiased, intuitive, and will it fully answer your questions?  Think of the full costs and difficulty of the lengthy analysis and hours on the backend that could have been avoided with a properly designed solution.  We’re glad to help any way we can, but we promise that CityPOV takes resident feedback to a powerful place.

Yes.  We’ve designed CityPOV for local customization. All cities we work with have chosen a blend of tried and trusted topics with practical customization where it makes sense.  The CityPOV design is extremely efficient and covers most city needs in a 7 to 8 minute survey.  That means there is room for additional questions at the end, if you need them.

Definitely.  However, there are some key decision points on your end.  Leaders who deliver on the critical moments in a timely basis can get results in as little as 5-6 weeks.  Internal delays can make timelines stretch longer.

The online dashboard is amazing.  Results are presented in a way that is so clear you cannot misunderstand priorities and areas for focus.  For those who wish to dig deeper, the ability to slice by demographics and other questions is obvious and simple.  Anyone who’s authorized from your city can access the beautiful charts and data.  Plus, you can easily export slides into PowerPoint or save findings to Excel.

CityPOV is designed for trend comparisons.  You may survey residents annually or on a less frequent basis.  Either way, you can compare progress and course correct.  Most cities survey their residents annually because 3-year commitment costs for CityPOV are reasonable. 

Some surveys are simply too long and not enjoyable.  That causes participation to drop now and also in subsequent years. We designed CityPOV to be shorter and to work well on mobile phones and other devices so participation remains high. It’s intuitive and easy. 

Garbage in, garbage out!  You have to trust the quality of the data.  That’s why we have a minimum of a 4-step process to validate that participants are from your city and they don’t take the survey several times.  Step 1, choose your city from a list.  Step 2, enter their zip code.  Step 3, capture their IP address and will remove all who don’t live in your city.  Step 4, only 1 response per IP address.  We can do more if required, but we have you covered on the quality front. But it doesn’t have to stop there. We will work with you to design the right solution for your city’s unique situation.

This is easy.  We’ll give you a link to test as soon as a draft survey is created.  Once we have input from your team about any refinements, we’ll make the tweaks, remove the test results and be ready to go live the next day.

Definitely.  We make it easy for survey participants to choose their language.  Data analysis is seamlessly done across languages, including comments and suggestions from survey participants. 

CityPOV allows for powerful benchmarking because of the consistent study design.  Plus, it allows for annual benchmarking year over year for your city to track progress.  We benchmark on NPS, city direction, place to live vs other cities, and other key questions.