Expanded customer satisfaction survey due in spring

An expanded version of the second annual governmentwide customer satisfaction survey will be released this spring, providing a broader look at how federal agencies are meeting customer expectations. The survey-a broader version of the 2000 customer satisfaction survey released last month-will include interviews with more than 90 customer groups, a major increase from earlier versions of the survey, which typically involved about 30 customer groups. Agencies determine which customers are interviewed for the survey. The survey ranks agencies on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) and is conducted by the University of Michigan Business School. "It was always our plan to broaden the survey to provide the best indication of customer satisfaction possible," said Rhudy Tennant, program manager at the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR). "We started with 30 agencies and next spring we'll expand that baseline to close to 100." The survey will provide customer feedback to several first-time agency participants, including the U.S. Postal Service, the Small Business Administration and the Agriculture Department's Farm Service Agency. Several agencies have also decided to survey additional customer groups. For example, USDA's Food and Nutrition Service will survey recipients of its food stamp and school lunch programs, in addition to participants in the Women, Infants and Children program, who were surveyed in earlier surveys. "All in all, I think this is a big step forward from last year," said Bob Stone, a partner in Public Strategies Group Inc. and former director of NPR. "I think a lot of agencies have gotten away from the idea that there is one definition of customers." Stone and other experts have questioned earlier versions of the survey because agencies have pursued widely different strategies as they seek feedback on their activities. While the Veterans Benefits Administration has surveyed a random sample of veterans-considered primary customers of VA services-the Environmental Protection Agency has selected reference librarians who use the EPA Web site and respond to environmentally-related questions. EPA will still survey only reference librarians in the expanded survey due out this spring. "It would be controversial for EPA to talk to chemical companies or metal finishing companies as customers," said Stone, "and yet for EPA to be most effective, they really need to measure how they are dealing with those people." Stone mentioned the Education Department's Office of Student Financial Assistance and the Immigration and Naturalization Service as agencies that had made notable progress in surveying customers who are the primary users of their services. The Office of Student Financial Assistance contracted with CFI Group, a private consulting firm, to survey a sample of customers of all of its major programs, totaling 15 customer groups in all. The results of the CFI Group survey will be included in this spring's expanded governmentwide survey. The INS will survey travelers who pass agency checkpoints at U.S. borders with Mexico and with Canada. Stone was also pleased to see that the Army, Navy and Air Force will survey personnel who are using military equipment. "I think it's wonderful that the services are surveying warfighters," he said. Because the spring survey will include the views of so many new customer groups, it will not be strictly comparable to the 1999 and preliminary-2000 versions of the survey. The ASCI index provides each agency with a numerical score from 0 to 100 based on customer expectations, perceived quality and perceived value. Since 1994, the ACSI index has become a gauge of customer satisfaction for more than 200 private companies in 34 industries, ranging from the Adolph Coors Co. to J.C. Penney to Zenith Electronics Corp. The following table contains a preliminary list of all customer groups to be interviewed in the spring version of the governmentwide survey. New participants for the expanded survey are in italics.

Source: National Partnership for Reinventing Government