Download PDFOn June 29, 2018, the Office of Management and Budget released a modification to Circular A-11 related to how federal agencies should manage customer experience improvement programs.
The purpose:
- Support a customer experience culture in the federal government.
- Provide a common framework for approaching and measuring customer experience.
- Encourage federal agencies to apply leading private sector practices.
- Improve customer satisfaction with federal service delivery.
Why?
Improving customer experience is a transformation priority in the President’s Management Agenda, and the guidance in this OMB addendum aligns with this long-term vision of federal government modernization.
GOVERNMENT SERVICES TRAIL THE PRIVATE SECTOR IN CONSUMER SATISFACTION BY 9 PERCENT.
Source: President’s Management Agenda
Customer experience influences satisfaction, trust and confidence in the federal government. The private sector has set a high bar, and digital makes new service models possible. People want MODERN, STREAMLINED and RESPONSIVE experiences from all types of federal service delivery.
Who?
All federal agencies are encouraged to use this guidance to improve customer experience, and High-Impact Service Providers (HISPs) are required to comply.
WHAT IS A HISP?
OMB defines HISPs as agencies that provide the most high-impact, customer-facing services. Find out if your agency is a HISP.
What?
Implementing the Circular A-11 guidance involves focusing on several critical areas to track and improve customer experience.
Customer Feedback
Collect and measure customer feedback
7 INDICATORS
- Satisfaction
- Confidence/trust
- Quality
- Ease/simplicity
- Efficiency/speed
- Equity/trust
- Employee helpfulness
5-POINT LIKERT SCALE
- Strongly disagree
- Disagree
- Neither agree nor disagree
- Agree
- Strongly agree
Data Collection
Maintain a customer experience data dashboard
- Overall customer experience metrics
- Customer experience feedback data
- Service level indicators
Self-Assesment
Complete a customer experience self-assessment across
- Measurement
- Governance and strategy
- Culture and organization
- Customer understanding
- Service design
Action Plan
Develop a customer experience action plan based on the self-assessment
- Organization and accountability
- Program maturity
- Data collection and metrics
- Delivery improvement
When?
HISPs that can collect sufficient data now should begin reporting it starting with FY19, Q1. Those without appropriate data collection currently in place must identify a target date for reporting—no later than FY21, Q1. Government-wide customer experience data will be shared publicly beginning in 2019.
INITIAL MILESTONES
February 28, 2019:
Complete data dashboard for the quarter ending December 31, 2018.
June 30, 2019:
Submit first action plan to OMB and make it available on agency web page.
ONGOING MILESTONES
Every fiscal year:
Conduct self-assessment.
Develop action plan.
Quarterly:
Share data dashboards until data is reported directly through and API to Performance.gov.
What agencies can do now
Use the tools
Take advantage of performance.gov/cx, which includes more detail on compliance as well as templates for self-assessments, data dashboards and action plans—and more.
Talk and ask
Establish core values that include customer experience. Communicate about them often—and solicit employee feedback and invest in their ideas. This empowers employees and helps avoid demotivated staff who often fail to provide a good customer experience.
Set the stage
Improving customer experience needs clear goals and policies, shared understanding, and C-suite leadership. Create a measurement baseline and share metrics so employees know how they are doing—and how they can improve.
