Here are some of the best questions for a citizen survey about the permit and licensing process, plus practical tips on designing them. We use Specific to build these surveys in seconds—no hassle, all insights.
Best open-ended questions for a citizen survey about permit and licensing process
Open-ended questions are perfect for surfacing nuanced frustrations, suggestions, or ideas that structured options would miss. When you need richer feedback—that extra context about “why” or “how”—lean on these. They let citizens explain their experience in their own words, unfiltered.
Here are 10 of our favorite open-ended questions for understanding citizens’ perspectives on the permit and licensing process:
What was the most challenging part of your recent permit or license application?
Describe any confusion you experienced during the permit or licensing process.
If you could change one thing about the process, what would it be?
How did you find information about required documents or steps?
Tell us about any delays or bottlenecks you encountered.
Was there anything especially helpful or clear in the process? What made it work well for you?
In your opinion, how could communication from the city/government be improved during your application?
What surprised you—good or bad—while getting your permit or license?
Can you suggest any new features or services that would make the process easier for citizens like yourself?
Do you have any advice for someone applying for a permit or license for the first time?
These open-ended questions help us dig deep into the citizen experience, capturing details and emotions that often point to actionable improvements. Thanks to advances in natural language processing, platforms like Specific can instantly analyze these open responses for recurring themes and sentiments, giving you actionable insights right away [2].
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for a citizen survey about permit and licensing process
Single-select multiple-choice questions are invaluable when you want measurable data that’s easy to compare. They're great when you want to quantify experiences (like overall satisfaction levels) or gently ease respondents into bigger topics—sometimes giving people concise options gets the conversation started, especially before diving deeper with follow-ups.
Question: How would you rate your overall experience with the permit and licensing process?
Very Satisfied
Satisfied
Neutral
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied
Question: What aspect of the process was the most time-consuming for you?
Finding Information
Gathering Documents
Submitting Application
Waiting for Approval
Other
Question: How did you submit your application?
Online Portal
In Person
By Mail
Not Sure/Don't Remember
When to follow up with "why?" We always want to follow up when someone gives a vague, negative, or unexpected answer. For instance, if a respondent selects “Dissatisfied,” a good follow-up might be: “Why did you feel dissatisfied with the process?” This context is where the gold is—those stories and reasons that unlock actionable changes.
When and why to add the “Other” choice? Always add “Other” when you can’t predict all possible answers. Sometimes citizens encounter something unusual—not covered by your options—and the follow-up lets them elaborate, surfacing unexpected insights you’d never find in pre-set choices.
Should you use an NPS-type question for a citizen survey about permit and licensing process?
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) isn’t just for businesses—it’s a reliable way to gauge how likely citizens are to recommend the process to others, revealing both broad satisfaction and identifying potential advocates, passives, and detractors. For government services, tracking this over time shows if changes are working and where deeper issues linger. If you want to try it, our NPS survey builder for permit and licensing processes is ready to use.
The power of follow-up questions
The game-changer in modern surveys is the power of well-timed follow-up questions. Our article on automated AI follow-up questions goes into the details, but here’s the quick overview: when you respond to the initial answer with a tailored follow-up (“can you clarify?” “what happened then?”), you turn a shallow reply into a real conversation—and that context delivers richer insights.
Specific’s AI handles this in real time, asking the smartest follow-up for each response. The AI listens to the citizen’s answer, detects where more detail is needed, and digs deeper like an expert moderator. This isn’t just convenient—it’s a leap in data quality, saving the hours you’d otherwise spend chasing down clarification emails and parsing cryptic comments. Plus, it saves costs and scales easily, as highlighted in recent research [1][3].
Citizen: “I experienced delays.”
AI follow-up: “Can you describe where in the process the delays happened, and what caused them?”
How many follow-ups to ask? We’ve found 2–3 follow-ups are usually enough to capture any missing context, while still feeling conversational (never burdensome). And if the respondent has already covered it all, the AI can skip ahead—Specific lets you set this so it always feels natural.
This makes it a conversational survey—not a static list, but a dynamic conversation where each answer guides the next question, just like a real expert would do.
Easy analysis, even for open-text responses: The best part? With AI-powered tools like Specific, you can analyze all data at scale—no matter how much unstructured text you collect. Summaries, themes, trends, and sentiment analysis are handled automatically [2][3].
These automated, AI-powered follow-up questions are changing how feedback is collected—give it a try and see how much easier it is to generate deeper, high-quality civic insights.
How to compose a prompt for ChatGPT or other GPTs to generate great citizen survey questions about permit and licensing process
The fastest path to a tailored survey is to use a clear, specific prompt when you ask ChatGPT (or any AI survey generator) to suggest questions. Here’s a base prompt:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for citizen survey about permit and licensing process.
But you’ll get even better results if you provide more context—who you are, what you want to learn, who the audience is, or any pain points you already know.
Example with extra context:
I’m running a survey for citizens in our city who recently applied for permits or licenses. Our main goal is to pinpoint moments of confusion, delays, or frustration, and to surface ideas that would make the process smoother. Suggest 10 open-ended questions that dig into these areas specifically.
Next, ask the AI to group the questions into categories—sometimes it surfaces patterns:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Once you see the categories, pick the ones you want to explore and ask the AI to go deeper. For example, if “communication with the city” is a pain point, write:
Generate 10 questions about communication and status updates during the permit and licensing process.
What is a conversational survey and why does it outperform old forms?
A conversational survey is more than a web form—it's a back-and-forth, chat-like interview guided by AI that adapts to each citizen’s responses. Instead of rigid steps, it flexes—the next question is shaped by what came before. Here’s how using an AI survey generator compares to building surveys the old way:
Manual Survey Creation | AI-Generated Conversational Surveys |
|---|---|
Manual question writing and logic setup | Instant survey generation based on goals or prompts |
Static, impersonal form experience | Dynamic, engaging chat with AI |
One-size-fits-all follow-ups (if any) | Contextual follow-ups—AI adapts in real time |
Hard to analyze open-ended feedback | AI-powered insights, themes, and summaries on demand |
Difficult to scale or adjust on the fly | Scalable, customizable, and quick to update |
Why use AI for citizen surveys? Because AI turbo-charges every step—creating better questions, enhancing data quality, automating analysis, and surfacing insights you might miss in a mess of text answers. It’s not just faster; it’s smarter and more effective [1][2][3].
If you want to see how survey building works, check out our guide on how to create a citizen survey about permit and licensing process.
From start to finish, Specific’s conversational survey platform offers the best-in-class experience—making it easy and even enjoyable for citizens to give meaningful feedback, while helping you find clear, actionable insights in minutes, not weeks.
See this permit and licensing process survey example now
Don’t settle for vague or incomplete feedback. See a real permit and licensing process survey example—discover the difference that conversational, AI-powered surveys make for citizen engagement and actionable results.