American consumers ranked the Internal Revenue Service at the bottom of a customer service survey of 200 private companies and government agencies for the fourth year in a row, in a report published this week by Fortune magazine.
The IRS received a score of 54 out of 100 on a scale of six quality indexes developed by the National Quality Research Center. While that score put the IRS at the bottom of the customer satisfaction heap, it is an 8 percent improvement over 1996, the biggest jump for any organization on the survey.
"Things are changing at the IRS," said IRS spokesman Larry Blevins. He noted that taxpayers who have shown up for the service's problem-solving Saturdays are giving the IRS high marks for improving customer service. Last month, new IRS commissioner Charles Rossotti told Congress that the agency will restructure itself to improve the way customers are treated. Rossotti has also instructed his agency to conduct surveys of taxpayers to find out how the IRS can better serve the public.
IRS' 8 percent gain in Fortune's rankings indicate that recent media and congressional attention to taxpayer abuse may not be hurting the agency's image. While the agency has a long way to go before it comes close to the ratings of top-ranked Mercedes-Benz, Heinz, and Maytag, its ranking is only six points behind that of McDonald's.
Fortune's American Customer Satisfaction Index includes two additional federal agencies: the Postal Service and the Army and Air Force Exchange Service. The military exchanges ranked 151st on the survey, with a quality score of 69. This was the first year the exchanges were included in the index.
The Postal Service received two rankings, one for its package and express mail services and another for its mail and counter services. USPS' package and express mail score was 70, a 5.4 percent drop from 1996, leaving it in 150th place on the survey. Federal Express ranked 23rd and United Parcel Service ranked 34th. USPS' mail and counter services ranked 159th, falling 6.8 percent to a score of 69.
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