This series of articles on customer service in government is sponsored by Microsoft. Download a customer service planning guide at Microsoft Government today. 

Are you being served?

The White House

Jeffrey Zients, the White House Deputy Director for Management and Chief Performance Officer, provided an update this week on the White House blog regarding the President's mandate for improving customer service. Zients calls out a few of the federal agencies who posted their customer service plans, as mandated in President Obama's April executive order. The State Department, for example, is developing a pilot so that individuals can apply for a passport card online... something anyone who has spent 3 hours waiting on line at the post office with a passport application can get behind. Read more here>>

Social Security Administration Bests Amazon, Google in Customer Satisfaction Survey

Government Technology

The recently released ACSI E-Government Satisfaction Index has found that the Social Security Administration's (SSA) iClaim and retirement estimator websites have a higher level of customer satisfaction than some of the biggest names on the internet. SSA's sites scored a 90 on the customer satisfaction scale, which according to Larry Freed CEO of ForeSee (the private analytics firm which conducted the survey) is a higher score than those attained by Amazon or Google. "A 90 is a phenomenal score, so when we are looking at the private sector, it is at the top of the heap in terms of private-sector scores as well," Freed said. The biggest loser of the survey? The Treasury Department and their TreasuryDirect site which scored rather dismal 63% Read more here>>

Feds Use Internet To Improve Customer Service

Information Week

Among agencies turning to the Internet to facilitate improvements in their customer service are the IRS and the Dept. of Health and Human Services. According to Federal Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients, agencies have begun posting their improvement plans online, showing how they will adopt best practices from the private sector, develop service standards and track performance against them, and benchmark themselves against the private sector to improve customers' experience. IRS is doing so with a Web app that will let taxpayers securely authenticate their identity online as a precursor to exchanging tax records electronically. Read more here >>

9 Ways Top Brands Use Social Media for Better Customer Service

Mashable

The advice that Rohit Bhargarva, senior vice president of global digital strategy at Ogilvy, shares on how brands can use social media to improve relationships with customers or clients applies to the public sector as well... it's simply a matter of extracting the best ideas and adapting them to the particulars of public service. Maybe not every employee should undergo 4 weeks of customer service training, as they must at Zappo's, but injecting the notion of customer service more broadly at agencies, and including bits of customer service training does go a long way in keeping it a top priority agency-wide. Bhargarva also writes that "Not every piece of negativity from a customer is bad news... Many times, it's an opportunity to confound expectations." In other words, don't freak out about negative perceptions or comments, but use them as a chance to react smartly and shift public opinion. Another big idea: find the right lens for viewing the data that your agency cares about. Read more here>>

A Brutal Self-Assessment of HHS' Web Presence

NextGov

It is always important to recognize when you have fallen short of your goals and finding ways to own up to and correct your mistakes. After all no one, even in the land of overachievers that is the federal government is perfect. In a frank and rather brutal review of their own online presence, the Department of Health and Human Services posted on its website a self-evaluation that should be read by all gov communicators who think they may be doing enough to make their agency live up to its full potential. HHS wrote that the web experience of browsing the agency's site "is not only antithetical to the concept of customer-centric design but is undeniably wasteful of precious resources." As a result of this under-performance, the agency plans to cut its web presence in half by the summer of 2012. This, folks, is a true cautionary tale of government customer service. Read more here>>

Out With Textbooks, in With Laptops for an Indiana School District

The New York Times

A school district replaces math and science books with laptops pre-loaded with education software. Educational traditionalists may rue the day, technophiles may rejoice, but the lesson for the rest of us is this: the move toward digital devices as the primary means of engaging with the public is happening at all levels now, even in schools. This is a notable development that's worth a few minutes of reflection if you are involved in any aspect of interacting with citizen-customers. What could be gained from turning your agency's paper-based interactions with customers into digital format? What would the minimum costs be... and are they really prohibitive?  Read more here >>