July 8, 2015
There’s an old joke that says one of the three biggest lies in America is “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.” While that may be true in some cases, new research shows that the government’s efforts to improve its contact centers are actually paying off.
That’s the word from CFI Group, a global leader in providing customer feedback insights through analytics based on the science of its founding partner, the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).
According to data recently released by CFI, citizen satisfaction with government contact centers has improved since 2014. The bad news? It still lags behind the private sector.
“We all know that government contact centers face inherent and deep-seated challenges,” said CFI Group CEO Sheri Petras, commenting on the findings. “But knowing what matters most to citizens will help contact centers meet their goal of providing excellent customer service.” Petras pointed to the report’s Government Center Satisfaction Index, which uses the proven methodology of the ACSI to provide managers with a better understanding of how to meet the needs of their contact center users.
The report cited three critical areas—“Policies and Procedures,” “Contact Process,” and “Representative’s Knowledge”—in which government call centers lag behind the private sector, and offers suggestions on how to close the gap.
“Compare those three critical areas with the private sector, and you can clearly see where government contact centers can perform more closely in line with their private-sector counterparts and return to 2012 levels, when the GCCSI score was 72,” Petras said.
CFI said that overall scores for government contact centers improved by four points in 2014 to 67, a rebound from a nine-point drop in 2013 that offers hope for better results in the future. The CFI Group's 2014 CCSI study found that private-sector contact centers had an overall score of 72.
It was also noted that the study found a significant increase in the number of respondents using agency websites as a means of contact; that figure rose from 14 percent in 2013 to 25 percent last year.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index is a standardized, cross-industry measure of customer satisfaction. Founded at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, the ACSI is a leading economic indicator of consumer spending in the U.S.