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Customer Experience Toolkit

Customer Experience (CX) is defined as the sum of all experiences a customer has with your organization. Since government is often a sole-source service provider (e.g., there’s only one place to pay taxes, or get a driver’s license), CX is even more important in the public sector than in other organizations. If that’s not enough to convince you, view this webinar on why federal agencies must improve CX.

This Toolkit is intended to help government agencies improve how we deliver services and information to the public.

How to use this guide:

  • Honestly assess where you’re doing well, and where you need some work, then use the resources below to help you improve
  • Coordinate internally, to ensure your agency “speaks with one voice” across the entire organization
  • Start small and iterate—focus on changes that will have a positive impact on the largest customer groups first

Topics covered in this toolkit include: Strategy, Governance, Culture, Customer Understanding, Design, Measurement, Digital Services, and Collaboration.

Strategy

Make the customer experience a strategic priority for your entire organization.

Get the big picture

Develop a strategy

Share high-level priorities and goals

Governance

Designate a single person to be responsible for the customer experience agency-wide; give them appropriate resources and authority to approve and monitor CX efforts and influence change across the entire organization.

Hire a Chief Customer Officer (CCO)

Stand up a Customer Team

Coordinate delivery of content and services

Follow all relevant laws and policies

Culture

Publish customer service standards and train all employees so they understand their role, responsibilities, expectations and behavioral norms in the customer experience ecosystem.

Train your employees

Build a customer-centric culture

Hold employees accountable

Respond to employee concerns

Reward success

  • Acknowledge employees who provide great service
    • Doesn’t have to be monetary—a simple “thank you” can go a long way

Customer Understanding

Systematically collect and analyze customer behavior and feedback to understand needs and expectations.

Clearly identify who you’re serving

Bring customers to life with personas

Map the entire customer journey

Analyze and act on data

Identify common questions

Design

Implement agile, iterative, customer-centric design processes for all customer interactions.

Follow design best practices

Be accessible

Be agile

Streamline contact center operations

Use plain language

Conduct regular and ongoing user testing

Solicit ideas from customers

Measurement

Define a framework for collecting common customer metrics, measures and outcomes within and across channels; require every program to regularly measure customer satisfaction and act on customer feedback.

Determine service levels for top tasks

Standardize processes

Use shared services

Engage your team

Publish your progress

Digital Services

Develop a Digital Business Strategy that embraces an improved customer experience, and empower and fund your digital services team to modernize agency websites and online systems to take advantage of new technologies.

Deliver anytime, anywhere, any channel government

Communicate clearly

Adopt shared services

Collaboration

Collaborate internally, and with other agencies and stakeholders, to improve the overall government customer experience.

Work together

Tap the wisdom of the crowd

Share your story