2008 Business and Finance
External Customer Satisfaction Survey Responses
| Advocacy and Institutional Relations |
Very Dissatisfied |
Dissatisfied | Neutral | Satisfied | Very Satisfied |
Don't Know | Total | 2008 Average Score | 2007 Average Score | 2005 Average Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Timeliness of AIR communications. | 0 | 3 | 3 | 25 | 28 | 3 | 62 | 4.32 | 3.98 | 4.07 |
| 0.0% | 4.8% | 4.8% | 40.3% | 45.2% | 4.8% | 100.0% | ||||
| AIR communications (Legislative Reports, website, etc.) contain needed content. | 0 | 2 | 7 | 27 | 23 | 3 | 62 | 4.20 | 4.07 | 4.26 |
| 0.0% | 3.2% | 11.3% | 43.5% | 37.1% | 4.8% | 100.0% | ||||
| Responsiveness of AIR staff. | 0 | 2 | 5 | 17 | 32 | 5 | 61 | 4.41 | 4.20 | 4.24 |
| 0.0% | 3.3% | 8.2% | 27.9% | 52.5% | 8.2% | 100.0% | ||||
| How knowledgeable AIR staff are on current issues. | 0 | 1 | 1 | 17 | 38 | 3 | 60 | 4.61 | 4.40 | 4.47 |
| 0.0% | 1.7% | 1.7% | 28.3% | 63.3% | 5.0% | 100.0% | ||||
| AIR provides right training and tools to meet campus needs. | 0 | 3 | 12 | 24 | 7 | 16 | 62 | 3.76 | 3.43 | |
| 0.0% | 4.8% | 19.4% | 38.7% | 11.3% | 25.8% | 100.0% | ||||
| Total Responses | 61 | 49 | 59 | |||||||
The 2008 External Customer Satisfaction survey provides the Office of Advocacy and Institutional Relations (AIR) ongoing feedback about our work with the campuses and the Chancellor’s Office to influence policy making in California. Over 60 colleagues responded to the survey (versus the 47 in 2007) giving the office very satisfied or satisfied responses ranging from 80% to a high of 91.7% on four of the five questions dealing with communications, responsiveness and knowledge. Better yet we not only increased all of these scores but in four of the five we exceeded the Business and Finance goal of 4.0 or better. The fifth question regarding advocacy training and tools is troubling but before we determine our next steps to improve in this area.
The responses from the business and advancement vice presidents were particularly heartening for us this year. It has been a long process in building our partnership with both groups and in particular the advancement vice presidents. While one comment on the survey, “less training on advocacy and more on fundraising” is disappointing it is not surprising given the evolution of our advancement divisions at the system and campus level. Today 16 of the campus legislative liaisons report to the advancement officer at the campus which is substantially different than we started working with the Executive Vice Chancellor Emeritus Richard West to establish more integrated communications, advocacy and development programs to help ensure that CSU develops the support it need to advocate for the investments our students, faculty, staff and state deserve. The number of responses from the advancement officers (11) with an average score of 4.1 is good news and reinforces that we are on the right path. The same is true of the campus presidents and business officers with scores of 4.6 and 4.5, respectively.
Internally (Chancellor’s Office) we continue to have positive feedback on improvements we have made to the bill analysis process and overall communication; however there is much to be done with regard to the interaction with assistant vice chancellors with a score range of 2.0 to 5.0 leading to an average of 3.8. Of the nine respondents we clearly have work to do and will seek some guidance from both West and new Executive Vice Chancellor Quillian on next steps to identify the problems we may be having with some of our colleagues. We believe that the responses to the majority of the questions on the survey reflect the work we have been doing to increase communication and collaboration with all of our partners and colleagues whether Chancellor’s Office experts, campus legislative liaisons, business and advancement vice presidents, and the CSU Alumni Council. The Legislative Report has been reformatted to be easier to read and has included information not only about CSU issues but also state policy makers and issues that have an impact on our efforts. The website has also been revised to provide timely and easily accessible information which our campus colleagues as well as the Academic Senate, CSU Alumni Council and others find useful in tracking issues of importance to the system. The bill analysis process review and changes we have implemented have responded to the needs of our colleagues leading to a more effective, timely and helpful analyses of the thousands of bills we are facing in the new legislative session.
Survey responses confirm that we made the right decision in recommending we eliminate the Alumni Legislative Days this year not only reducing the number of meetings that require travel but also to manage increasing fiscal challenges for our campuses. We did conduct a one day training session recently that received high marks including comments that it was the “best we had ever offered” to the campus-based teams. We believe that these comments reflect our willingness to listen and learn from others about what they need to do our work together. We look forward to further improvements in the year ahead including a greater use of technology to provided information and training. Sensitive to the time and travel expenses for meetings we are also working with the CSU Alumni Council to reduce the number of in-person meetings relying more on committee work and conference calls for organizational business. We can continue to move in this direction but will also need the assistance of the campus leadership in making sure that these alumni leaders are included as part of campus-based advocacy and communications efforts to make this work.
We are concerned with the responses to the fifth question in our survey (advocacy training and tools). This question was slightly changed for this year’s survey asking how well we provide training and tools to help us tease out the real concerns of our partners in doing this work. We believe that further research is in order for us to effectively use this information to improve our work. For example, only 3 people indicated that they were dissatisfied with the training and tools we provide while 31 indicated that they were satisfied/very satisfied. Over half of the responses either were neutral or do not know. 2008 marked the final year of the implementation of the Kintera e-advocacy tool so it is possible that some of the responses reflect frustration in the development and implementation of this tool with limited results to date. Based on the campus-by-campus interviews we conducted last fall we have refined the system, added 24/7 help desk support for all sites, and have begun using the tool on a regular basis, a common request from our campus colleagues. We hope that these changes coupled with demonstrable results in the use of the system that help us achieve the goals and objectives for CSU will be reflected in future surveys.
In conclusion we believe that the 2008 survey results give us good feedback on where we need to continue making improvements. We also look forward to working with our colleagues to learn more on the results to make the next year another year of improvement.