The annual ‘‘mystery shopper’’ style survey covering ‘‘first impressions, communications, problem solving, knowledge and overall experience’’ across telephone, online portal and email services, was carried out by the Association of Local Government Information Management (ALGIM) organisation in November 2025.
Clutha came second out of 78 councils with an overall score of 97.6%, well above the national peer average 89.4%.
First place went to Waitomo District Council.
The local success was formally acknowledged as an agenda item at the council’s March 5 meeting, where councillors and executive staff applauded their customer services team.
‘‘We came 63rd in 2023, 33rd in 2024 and now second in 2025,’’ finance and policy group manager Sharon Jenkins said.
‘‘Which shows how seriously and diligently we’ve taken our customer service.
‘‘We have quite a few staff managing these frontline customer inquiries and the mystery shopper might have spoken to any of them, so clearly, the whole team is consistently stepping up with high standards and we’re very grateful and proud of them for that.’’
Elsewhere on the March 5 agenda were results from Clutha District Council (CDC) resident satisfaction surveys showing improvement from 55% in 2024 to 60% in 2025 for satisfaction with ‘‘overall performance of council’’.
ALGIM concluded CDC demonstrated consistently high customer service experience, particularly across online and phone channels and needed only to focus on ‘‘protecting and sustaining excellence’’.
