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Best questions for civil servant survey about service wait times and process efficiency

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Adam Sabla

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Aug 22, 2025

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Here are some of the best questions for a civil servant survey about service wait times and process efficiency, plus tips on how to design them effectively. You can instantly build a tailored survey with Specific in seconds—no experience required.

Best open-ended questions for civil servant survey about service wait times and process efficiency

Open-ended questions encourage honest, nuanced feedback. They're essential for uncovering insights you won’t catch with rigid formats or quick ratings. Use them when you’re looking to understand motivations, stories, and pain points—especially when measuring something as nuanced as process efficiency or customer satisfaction.

  1. What is your overall impression of our current service wait times?

  2. Can you describe a recent experience where you felt the process was efficient or inefficient?

  3. Which steps in the service process do you find most time-consuming, and why?

  4. What would you change about how we handle service requests?

  5. How does the wait time affect your motivation or productivity?

  6. If you could add or remove one step in the service process, what would it be?

  7. How do you feel about the support provided during peak service hours?

  8. What’s one thing that would make our service process more pleasant for you?

  9. In your opinion, how well does the current process accommodate urgent requests?

  10. Are there any tools or resources you wish you had to work more efficiently?

Remember: In the latest Irish survey, 84% of business customers said they were satisfied with their service, but satisfaction with online efficiency jumped by 12 percentage points—emphasizing just how important these nuanced insights can be. [1]

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for civil servant survey about service wait times and process efficiency

Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect when you want to quantify trends or give people a quick starting point. They're less demanding than open-ended questions and pave the way for follow-ups. By offering clear choices, you can easily spot problem areas, while making it easier for respondents who might otherwise get overwhelmed thinking of comprehensive answers from scratch.

Question: Overall, how satisfied are you with our current service wait times?

  • Very satisfied

  • Somewhat satisfied

  • Neutral

  • Somewhat dissatisfied

  • Very dissatisfied

Question: Which part of the process do you believe most needs improvement?

  • Initial response time

  • Documentation process

  • Approval workflow

  • Final delivery of service

  • Other

Question: How often do you encounter delays that impact your work?

  • Almost never

  • Sometimes

  • Often

  • Almost always

When to follow up with "why?" After someone selects an option, always consider prompting with “why?” or “Can you say more about that?” For example, if someone indicates they’re “dissatisfied” with wait times, you get more meaningful feedback by asking for context—was it a one-off event, or a recurring frustration? This deepens your data, rather than leaving you guessing at root causes.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always include “Other” when you suspect your options might not cover every scenario. Follow up with an open-ended input—respondents can uncover blind spots you didn’t see coming, often providing fresh perspectives that structured options miss.

Interestingly, 55% of UK civil servants indicate efficiency is a priority, but employee turnover remains high—suggesting there are often gaps or pain points that standard options can’t capture. [2]

NPS question—for civil servant survey about service wait times and process efficiency

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a simple and universally recognized question for gauging loyalty and advocacy. Even inside civil service organizations, NPS tells you how likely a team member is to recommend the current process to a colleague. This is powerful—it gives a shorthand “gut feel” signal about process satisfaction and can be tracked over time.

  • NPS is clear, standardized, and lets you benchmark across teams or departments.

  • It’s fast to answer and pairs perfectly with AI-driven follow-ups to dig into the “why”.

If you want a ready-made survey using NPS for this context, generate a NPS survey for civil servants about service wait times and process efficiency.

The power of follow-up questions

Well-timed follow-up questions change everything. If you only rely on the first answer, responses are often incomplete—or just plain vague. Specific’s automatic follow-up questions feature uses AI to respond in real time, probing gently for missing details or digging deeper based on what the respondent actually said.

  • Civil servant: “The process felt slow.”

  • AI follow-up: “Which part of the process felt slowest to you, and how did it impact your work?”

Without this, you're left guessing—was the issue a system delay, a paperwork backlog, or something else?

How many follow-ups to ask? We’ve found 2–3 smart follow-ups are enough for most questions. Allow skipping to the next topic once your key details have been captured. Specific lets you control this easily in survey settings.

This makes it a conversational survey: respondents feel like they’re chatting with a colleague, not filling out another dull form. That’s the secret to higher engagement.

AI survey response analysis, GPT-powered insights: Even with hundreds of rich, open-ended replies, it’s easy to analyze responses with AI. Our guide to AI survey response analysis shows how you can use chat-CPT-style queries to instantly surface patterns and themes—no manual coding needed.

Automatic probing (AI-powered follow-ups) is a new approach in survey design. If you haven’t tried it yet, generate a conversational survey and see the difference. You’ll never go back to static forms again.

How to compose a prompt for ChatGPT or other GPTs for a civil servant survey

Getting great survey questions out of ChatGPT (or any GPT) starts with a tight prompt. Start broad, then get specific:

This first prompt covers the essentials:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Civil Servant survey about Service Wait Times And Process Efficiency.

But GPT works best with more context. Include your team, your goals, or pain points you know about. For example:

I am creating a survey for civil servants who regularly process service requests. Our team wants to reduce wait times and identify the most frustrating process steps. Suggest 10 open-ended questions that will help us uncover pain points and improvement ideas.

After you’ve received an initial batch of questions, ask GPT to organize them:

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

Once you spot the best-fit categories—like “automated processes” or “team communication”—dig deeper by prompting:

Generate 10 questions focused on the category ‘team communication and collaboration’.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey harnesses AI to turn data collection into a friendly, back-and-forth chat. Respondents answer naturally, and the AI dynamically adapts—probing, clarifying, and digging deeper just like a human expert would. The survey feels personal, engaging, and radically different from endless Likert scales or bland text boxes.

With an AI survey builder you don’t just get static questions—you get a living interview that adapts to each respondent. That means higher data quality and less survey abandonment.

Manual Survey Creation

AI-generated Surveys (Conversational)

Rigid, fixed questions

Adaptive, context-aware follow-ups

Can be time-consuming to build

Survey built in seconds via prompts

Dull, form-like experience

Feels like chatting with a peer

Vulnerable to incomplete answers

AI probes for clarity, more complete insights

Manual data analysis required

Instant AI-powered insights and summaries

Why use AI for civil servant surveys? AI survey generation streamlines your work—no building from scratch, no scripting endless follow-ups, and no headaches analyzing heaps of unstructured text. For civil servants tackling process improvement, that means faster feedback loops and more actionable change. Plus, you can tap into ready-made templates or edit your survey in natural language whenever you want adjustments.

Specific leads the way in delivering best-in-class conversational surveys, smoothing out the survey journey for both creators and civil servant respondents alike. If you need help with step-by-step setup, check out our how-to article on creating a survey for civil servants about service wait times and process efficiency.

See this service wait times and process efficiency survey example now

See for yourself how a conversational survey can uncover deeper insights, streamline analysis, and make feedback easier for everyone. Experience the difference—and create your own now.

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Sources

  1. gov.ie. 2022 Civil Service Business Customer Survey Results

  2. gov.uk. Civil Service People Survey 2023 Results Highlights

  3. VietnamPlus. Over 90% of Citizens Report No Difficulties from Civil Servants

Adam Sabla - Image Avatar

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.