Describe your municipality, services, and reporting goal. Makeform creates an editable citizen satisfaction survey with consistent scales, service follow-ups, resident context, and comments.
Send resident feedback to Google Sheets, Slack, and Zapier.
Sample prompts for the builder
Choose a prompt, adapt it to your jurisdiction, or send it to the editable Makeform builder.
Audience
Residents across every neighborhood
Format
Ten-minute survey with a service matrix
Prompt size
251 chars
Example survey structure
Ten-minute survey with a service matrix
How long have you lived in the city?
Which neighborhood do you live in?
How satisfied are you with each service?
Which three services need the most attention?
What should the city improve first?
Suggested routing tags
Public works
Parks and libraries
Needs follow-up
Add Not used beside service ratings so residents can skip services they did not experience.
Step 1
Scope
services, residents, and reporting period
Step 2
Measure
consistent scales with not-used options
Step 3
Segment
neighborhood and service experience
Step 4
Act
priorities, comments, and follow-up routing
Resident feedback that can guide work
Separate recent experience from general perception, use one scale across departments, and let residents explain what needs attention.
Use one labeled scale across services, with a not-used option for residents without recent experience.
Show questions only for services used, then ask dissatisfied residents for the location and issue.
Limit improvement choices, then pair priorities with comments explaining local context.
Four municipal survey moments
Annual benchmarks and post-service checks answer different questions. Choose a moment your office can act on.
Measure broad satisfaction, priorities, and service use each year.
Ask about resolution, effort, wait time, clarity, and helpfulness after an interaction.
Focus on parks, libraries, sanitation, planning, or public works.
Collect priorities before a plan, program calendar, or budget proposal.
Survey workflow
Define the decision, edit questions, distribute the survey, and route results to service owners.
Name the departments, residents, experience window, and decision the results will support.
Use plain names, label scales, add skip choices, and apply conditional questions.
Share one link by email, web page, QR code, or kiosk. Test mobile paths before launch.
Send results to a sheet, tag departments, separate users from nonusers, and track themes.
Survey design choices
A long list of vague ratings produces weak direction. A structured survey connects satisfaction to a service, a recent experience, and a practical improvement priority.
Field guide
Six question groups create a survey municipal teams can filter, compare, and discuss.
Eligibility and timing
Confirm the respondent's connection to the jurisdiction and define a recent service-use period so current experiences stay distinct from older impressions.
Overall measures
Use one fully labeled satisfaction scale across services. Add broad measures only when they support a defined reporting goal.
Service modules
Group services by department and show detail only after a resident selects a service, keeping unrelated questions out of the path.
Priorities
Ask residents to choose up to three service areas or rank a short list so every option does not appear equally urgent.
Resident context
Collect neighborhood or demographic context only for planned comparisons. Make sensitive items optional and include Prefer not to answer.
Comments and follow-up
Use one focused improvement prompt. If staff may respond, ask permission and collect contact details in a separate optional step.
Related tools
Use focused surveys and request forms alongside the community-wide measure, so each response reaches the right municipal workflow.
Create a general-purpose survey when the audience or topic extends beyond municipal services.
Open toolCollect comments about neighborhood conditions, local programs, and community priorities.
Open toolMeasure library access, collections, programs, facilities, and staff experiences in more detail.
Open toolAsk where and when residents feel safe, and gather context about specific public spaces.
Open toolReview a town hall, workshop, festival, or public meeting immediately after it ends.
Open toolTurn a specific pothole, missed pickup, or facility issue into a trackable request.
Open toolFAQ
Practical answers for city, county, town, and district teams preparing a resident feedback survey.
A citizen satisfaction survey measures resident experiences and priorities across services such as streets, waste, parks, libraries, permitting, safety, utilities, and customer service.
Include municipal connection, recent service use, one rating scale, service attributes, limited priorities, and an improvement question. Add resident context only for planned comparisons.
Keep post-service surveys brief. Community surveys can be longer, but show detail only for services used. Remove questions that do not support a decision.
Use identical labels and scale direction, plus Not used. Keep wording stable and compare overall results with recent users.
Omit contact fields or make them optional. For follow-up, ask permission in a separate final step and explain the municipality's reporting approach.
Use broad categories tied to an analysis need, make sensitive items optional, and offer Prefer not to answer. Plan groupings before collection and avoid reporting very small groups.
Share one link through the municipal website, email, notices, QR posters, libraries, partners, and staffed devices. Test on mobile and offer language or accessibility options the office can support.
Yes. Makeform provides unlimited free forms and responses, so your office can generate, edit, publish, and collect resident feedback without a response cap. The paid tier removes the Makeform badge.
Give every service area a clearer signal.
