22 Ideas to Improve Customer Service
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Yesterday GovLoop held our 1st GovLoop Symposium (in partnership with Rightnow) where we focused on how government can improve customer service and meet the new executive order on customer service.
We had an awesome group of around 40 government leaders from NIH to DOD to OPM to USDA (over 20 different agencies) where we had an interactive dialogue led by Wendi Brick and speakers Martha Dorris (GSA), David Dejewski (DOD), and Kevin Paschuck (RightNow Technologies)
The group was full of ideas to improve service so I thought I'd right up 22 quick ideas on how to improve customer service that came from yesterday's session where we organized the discussion based on the 5 questions of the Obama Customer Service Memo.
1) Basic web analytics to get stats on what customers actually doing & words searching on
2) Add a link to a survey in employee signature lines
3) Use social media to get feedback - some people may not want to fill out a full survey but will tell you how doing
4) Host focus groups - a good way to do it is with webinar focus groups
5) Ask the employees on the front line what common complaints are
6) Engage the customer group in setting expectations
7) Society often defines what good customer service is - gov't keeping with customer expectations across all experiences
8) Set closed loop sessions - Set expectations, train staff, measure performance, reward people, coach others, continuous feedback loop
9) Everyone is different in how interpret customer service
10) Need to start with the knowledge foundations, everything built on a common platform
11) Usa.gov does have a knowledge base, makes a huge difference on the consistency across channels
12) Make sure have FAQ but also SAQ - should have asked questions - what questions should your customers be asking you
13) Get to clear simple mission & get everyone involved that customer service as part of job
14) Hierarchy of needs - set the knowledge information first, consistent message across organizations, survey, get everything solidify and then add more advanced services
15) Define who your most important customers are - your key types of customers
16) Identify the key tasks they want to accomplish and then map how they can accomplish them across channels
17) Provide as much in Tier 0 - Self service where folks can find info without talking to a representative
18) Think seasonal - Certain times of year people want specific information. Prioritize. When in earthquake, show that first. When snow season coming around, highlight.
What ways can we use innovative technology to lower costs, decrease service delivery times, and improve customer experience?
20) Walk a mile in your customer shoes for ideas
Comment
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Comment by Robert Bacal on October 18, 2011 at 3:07pm -
I don't want to be overly negative here, but I'm worried about the number of items included that suggest that "technology" will somehow improve customer service. Customer service is about people, primarily and while there's places for technology, I'm firmly convinced, looking at research and numbers, that at least the perceptions of customer service, since the increased reliance on technology (social media, phone trees, etc) have worsened. At least that's what the research says.
Newer stuff coming out also suggests that Facebook is a poor platform for communicating, with as few as 1% of "friends" even reading what's posted. Studies have suggested that somewhere between 75% and 95% of tweets never receive any response. 70% of companies, at least according to research, do not respond to tweets about brands. (much of the sm research is of poor quality...)
Governments have made huge strides in harnessing the Internet for the benefit of tax payers, customers, citizens, but I believe we've gotten close to hitting the limit. People want to communicate with people. Yes, they want information, and governments have been good at getting that online, but past that, very few customers PREFER machine interaction.
Anyway, I've written a number of articles on customer service and t...
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Comment by Wendi Pomerance Brick on August 29, 2011 at 9:55am -
Thanks to GovLoop for coordinating this event! It was terrific to be part of taking another step towards breaking down our traditional government silos and share/brainstorm how to best make this EO work and effect positive change in our agencies for all customers (internal and external alike).
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Comment by Nathan Greenhut on August 25, 2011 at 2:48pm -
Understanding customers or groups of customers is vital. There is an old saying that "Customers come first." I have also heard that getting a good zip code in a customer's mind is ultimately much harder than getting a bad zip code. Studying a customer's behavior or outcomes is very related to brand equity. In government, I think the right way of saying this would be service equity. In other words, customer or citizens expectations when they enter the door to a service they have heard good things about are drastically different from services where they have not heard people having a good experience. Overall I think collecting information, case studies, dialogues, performing "mystery" customers, mapping a service and performing customer dreaming sessions are all good ways to ensure success. If you have any examples, metrics or analytics for customer experience, please post them to this group on analytics (link below) or let me know.
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