Over the Christmas break, the team here at villages.com.au were managing Australia’s largest resident survey.
This is the third time villages.com.au has commissioned the National Resident Survey, however, it’s the first time 93% of the surveys were to be completed online.
We had a total of:
- 58 operators
- 547 villages
- 74,210 residents
Of the 74,210 surveys 5,100 were a pen & paper control sample which meant 69,110 residents were sent online codes.
I’m ecstatic to report that we had 18,212 residents complete the survey – a 25% completion rate. This is remarkable given the 2017 PWC/Property Council Retirement Census suggests that the average resident age is 80.
We expected the phone to ring with enquiries from Village Managers and residents; what we didn’t expect was 1,400 calls over the two weeks.
We had 3 full-time staff answering incoming calls (pictured above) and between us, we handled approx. 80 per day with another 60 going to an automated voice mail with information on the survey (we returned messages left the next day).
Also, unexpected was the number of additional codes we had to generate for village managers.
In the lead up to the survey, operators were asked the number of residents in each of their villages. This number was the number of access codes that were generated and sent to the villages – one for each resident to complete their survey.
For more than 20% of the 547 villages, additional codes had to be generated with many discrepancies as high as 30+ residents.
An interesting observation from the survey.
Allison
