Lending an Ear! (Court Users’ Feedback)

By Dimarie Alicea-Lozada

Honest feedback is necessary to improve services. It also helps improve confidence in users when they understand that their opinions are important. It is commonplace for industries like restaurants, retailers, hospitals, and others to use customer satisfaction surveys and the courts are no exception.

Harvard Business Review discusses the importance of feedback as a foundational operating principle and that encouraging it could help to create “a vibrant and adaptive business environment that is responsive to customer needs and preferences.” The authors suggest that the goal of the assessment must be to improve. Employees should be trained to reframe questions and ask more questions, so customers understand their purpose is to improve their services. Businesses should focus on customers’ actions and not so much on what they say. For example, how often they repeat purchases or if in a restaurant, if a plate is half eaten. Surveys must be a part of their business and not a periodic intervention.

A Trends 2023 article discusses the benefits of feedback. The author asked hundreds of court leaders about their use of feedback and found that they do not collect any feedback from court users. Listening to customer feedback helps identify practices that can be improved. It also helps measure key court goals and helps courts build public trust and confidence.

Some state courts are receiving feedback. The Superior Court of California, County of San Bernardino, has a webpage where court users can give their feedback on their experiences. They also have a PDF Feedback form that can be printed and submitted to the court with complaints about the services received and with suggestions on how to improve the services provided.

The Springfield Municipal Court in Oregon has a web court customer satisfaction survey. It has more than 30 questions on access to the court, fairness or the way the clients were treated, court staff, court materials or information received during their visit to the court, court facilities, and overall satisfaction.

New Jersey Courts have a dedicated website where they ask court users to tell them how the courts are doing. The court user must choose the superior court where they received services, complete the form, save it, and send it via email to the corresponding ombudsman. The form is in both English and Spanish. They ask about the court staff, condition of the facilities, and if the user was pleased with their court business.

Aurora Police Department, Illinois recently announced that “they have become the first U.S. law enforcement agency to collect feedback from those who call for service, as a means of improving their operations.” They partnered with a community engagement platform to send surveys to people who requested services from the police. The surveys are anonymous, and the data collected are shown on a dashboard.

Has your court asked for feedback from court users? Share your experiences with us. For more information, contact [email protected] or call 800-616-6164. Follow the National Center for State Courts on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and Vimeo. For more Trending Topics posts, visit ncsc.org/trendingtopics and subscribe to the LinkedIn newsletter.