U.S. Government Agencies Turn to a Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) to Measure and Benchmark Performance in Meeting Citizen Needs and Expectations
By Bernie Lubran, Federal Consulting Group, US Department of the Treasury
Background
Since the early 1990s, the United States federal government has increasingly focused on how well its programs and services meet or exceed the needs and expectations of its citizens. Through a combination of legislation, policy directives from the Executive Branch, and agency initiatives, federal agencies have made tremendous strides in identifying their customers, establishing standards of performance, measuring satisfaction with their services, programs, and websites, and reporting the results to the American people.
Challenge in Measuring Citizen Satisfaction
Government program managers eagerly sought to implement sound policies and practices for improving citizen satisfaction. However, one of their challenges was to find and use a measure that would provide highly accurate and actionable results and also enable them to benchmark agency service performance against other similar service providers in both the government and the private sector. At the same time, government policymakers saw a need for a measure that would track the quality of overall government services delivered to its citizens.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI)
In 1999 the federal government selected the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) to be a standard tool for measuring citizen satisfaction with the delivery of government services. Participation in the ACSI, which is voluntary, is managed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Federal Consulting Group.
The ACSI evolved from research conducted in Sweden in the 1980s by Dr. Claes Fornell, a professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, which led to the publication of the Swedish Barometer, a measure of the quality of goods and services in Sweden. At the request of the American Society for Quality, Dr. Fornell created the American Customer Satisfaction Index in 1994. The ACSI is a uniform and independent measure of consumers’ experiences with the purchase and consumption of goods and services in the United States. It is also an indicator of future buying behavior and therefore of the financial health of companies.
The ACSI reports scores on a 0 to 100 scale at the national level. It measures 7 economic sectors, 41 industries (including e-commerce and e-business), and more than 200 companies. The ACSI also measures citizen experiences with the leading services delivered by government such as social security, healthcare, and veterans’ benefits; grants and loan programs for students, exporters, farmers, etc.; recreational facilities and services; services to international travelers; tax filing; regulatory and enforcement programs; and hundreds of government websites (for a complete listing of currently measured services see www.customerservice.gov/govt-04.html). In addition to company-level satisfaction scores, ACSI produces scores for the causes and consequences of customer satisfaction and their relationships.
U.S. Government Experience with the ACSI
Government executives started this process by first determining what services and programs they provided and then identifying who were their customers. Each agency proceeded to select one or two of its most important programs or services, and then the University of Michigan set out to survey and analyze customer satisfaction for each government activity utilizing the ACSI.
By participating in the ACSI, program managers have been able to identify and understand which of their processes should receive the most immediate attention. Examples of the kinds of activities that were identified included writing regulations and information in plain language, providing more services to citizens electronically, maintaining high quality customer service, and streamlining processes to provide quicker responses to inquires and applications for services or benefits. By responding to findings from the ACSI, managers are able to improve program effectiveness and focus more on results, service quality, and customer satisfaction. Because their research is independent, the data is more meaningful to policymakers and ordinary citizens.
One agency that has clearly benefited from the results of ACSI data has been the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the agency responsible for tax collection. The IRS has separately measured the satisfaction of individuals who have filed their tax returns using the traditional paper-based method and compared that with the satisfaction of individuals who have filed their tax returns electronically. The results show that citizens are significantly more satisfied using the electronic tax filing process because there are fewer errors, the filing process is much quicker, and they can obtain their refunds faster. Moreover, the IRS is able to reduce its overall costs and regain citizen trust in the income tax system. The IRS is so pleased with the results that they have announced that beginning in 2006, large corporations will be able to file their returns electronically.
The results, available on the website www.customerservice.gov, sponsored by the Federal Consulting Group, as well as the University of Michigan website www.theacsi.org, show that citizen satisfaction has steadily increased since the first year of the project, rising from a score of 68.6 in 1999 to 72.1 in 2004. For comparison purposes, the national ACSI for this same time period rose from 72.1 to 74.3. Thus, citizens are now able to follow the progress of government’s service quality with an objective measure.
The Future
Modern economies are characterized by service and information exchange. By utilizing the underlying behavioral-based methodology of the ACSI, it is possible for government managers in other countries to measure the performance of their programs, services, and websites over time. In addition, they can benchmark their performance against service delivery by other government and private sector entities. As national policymakers ponder the notion of developing a set of key national indicators to measure their country’s position and growth in a global environment, they should consider using an index measure of the quality of goods and services such as the ACSI.
Bernie Lubran is the Director of ACSI Business Development for the Federal Consulting Group in the U.S. Department of the Treasury.