Qualtrics, the leader and creator of the experience management (XM) category, announced that the City of Corona, Calif. has used the Qualtrics platform to drive meaningful improvements in engagement and satisfaction among residents and city employees. The city saw a tenfold increase in the resident willingness to provide feedback after adopting Qualtrics. Corona chose Qualtrics to help drive its digital transformation in June, 2021. Qualtrics’ cloud-native XM platform is enabling the city to capture and analyze feedback from its residents and employees and take action to improve the services it delivers, enhance the workplace experience, and inform the transformation of its downtown into a thriving, vibrant destination.
A Historic City Embracing Change
Leaders of the historic City of Corona, established in 1886, recognized the need for a more modern, digital way to engage residents and staff in crucial decisions impacting their experience.
The city chose Qualtrics as their single, unified platform for listening, understanding and acting on all stakeholder feedback. As part of their internal modernization efforts, Corona used Qualtrics to capture employee feedback on their internal technology resources. Through this work, employee feedback informed new technology investments and enablement, culminating in a 28% increase in employee satisfaction with tech resources. As a result of employee feedback, the city also implemented a four-day workweek, which led to reduced attrition rates and heightened employee fulfillment.
Democratizing Decision-Making by Giving A Voice to More Community Members
The city took the same data-driven approach to its resident experience, seeking early feedback on its downtown revitalization project and city rebranding initiative. Traditional in-person methods of collecting feedback reached a limited audience, so the city expanded where and how they gathered residents’ feedback and preferences beyond town hall meetings to farmers markets, social media, government websites and QR codes. This enabled the city to get a much more inclusive view of resident feedback. Corona also harnessed Qualtrics AI to analyze the unsolicited feedback residents were providing about their government interactions on social media, the city’s website, and other channels.
With Qualtrics, the City of Corona can now integrate resident feedback with geographic information systems (GIS) analysis in order to reach previously underrepresented segments of its population. Resident feedback based on this approach has informed how the city will allocate $100 million for its City Park project. Feedback from community members within one mile of the park was weighed more heavily than feedback from residents who live farther away. This ensured the preferences of underrepresented people who reside closer to the park were not outweighed by a louder majority. Funds have been allocated to update the park for community sports, an aquatic center, and a venue for music, festivals and other events.
“As CIO, it’s important to advocate for technology available today that helps us listen to the silent majority in our city,” said Chris McMasters, Chief Information Officer at City of Corona. “Early successes with improving response rates and community engagement taught us how critical it is to close the feedback loop and communicate back to our people. Corona residents can now see and feel the tangible outcomes of their input, reinforcing the significance of their contributions and building trust with their local government.”
An Inclusive City for All Residents
Qualtrics Digital Experience Analytics helps the City of Corona ensure its new website catered to resident needs. With features like rage click tracking and session replay to identify and resolve common website experience issues, the city is able to identify points where residents have issues on the site and address them to improve the experience for everyone. The city also uses Qualtrics Customer Journey Optimizer to reduce friction, and improve digital self-service so they can save frontline employee time for more strategic activities.
“This transformative, human-centered approach to improving employee and customer experience would not have been possible without Qualtrics,” continued McMasters. “The XM platform has become indispensable to serving our community, and enhancing representation and quality of life across the city.”
“Government leaders like Chris McMasters at City of Corona are doing some of the hardest work anywhere – driving transformational change in traditional bureaucracies,” said Chelsie Bright, head of public sector industry at Qualtrics. “They started by fixing pressing problems like better enabling city employees with technology and repairing broken and frustrating resident journeys on the website. The City of Corona is a pioneer in adopting new and innovative digital solutions to transform the experience of engaging with government – listening to the voices of all city residents and employees to inform planning and then taking action to improve outcomes, at scale.”
