Improving Customer Service

Executive Summary

The Internal Revenue Service, the federal agency most citizens prefer to
avoid, might seem the least likely to develop a customer focus. But a
story about the IRS shows the kind of service that government employees
can deliver:

A down-on-his-luck taxpayer hitchhiked from out of state to the IRS
Ogden, Utah Service Center to pick up his refund check. As it turns out,
Ogden does not issue checks. But IRS employees there confirmed that he
was due a refund. They ordered a check sent to Ogden from a disbursing
center. Because the process would take 10 days, and the hitchhiker had
no money, IRS employees found him shelter and collected enough food
money to see him through until the check arrived.

This Ogden center won the 1992 Presidential Award for Quality.
Unhappily, their performance is not typical of the federal government.

Service is Below Expectation. The overall quality of service provided by
the government is below what the public expects and has a right to
expect. Long lines, busy signals, bad information, and financial errors
are far too common. Similar problems with similar causes also afflicted
corporate America--too many layers, internal monopolies, and lack of
customer focus. But business, which lives or dies based on customer
satisfaction, has been busy reinventing itself over the past 15 years.
Today's business successes are customer driven.

So far the government has not kept pace. Unlike businesses, government
agencies rarely get their funding directly from the public. Lacking this
direct link to their real customers, agencies often focus instead on
powerful stakeholders, such as Congress or higher-level management. As
these stakeholders raise issues, agencies increase their specialization,
add organizations, and pile on more directives. In the process, the
focus moves further and further from their real customers, the public.

The Beginning of a Customer Service Emphasis. The good news is that the
help given to the hitchhiking taxpayer in Ogden is not an isolated
incident. In some agencies there are beginnings of a new public sector
emphasis on customer service.

Programs in the Forest Service, the Defense Department, and other
federal organizations have already boosted both customer satisfaction
and productivity. The Commerce Department's International Trade
Administration set up a 24-hour phone system that lets callers select
topics from a menu and fax themselves information on the changing trade
situation in Eastern Europe. The Department of Veterans Affairs plans
mandatory training in courtesy for employees serving the needs of
veterans. And information technology leaders from 12 federal agencies
have formed a "Service to the Citizen" alliance, in which members
collaborate on projects and fund work to sort out how technology can
improve service to the government's customers.

In June 1993, this alliance, plus 150 federal, state, and local
officials, and leaders from the private sector and academia, met at a
Richmond, Virginia, conference to consider the government's ability to
deliver information and services to the public. The conference report,
We the People, sees the government's challenge as learning to focus on
the customer instead of internal processes. "[T]he ultimate goal," it
said, "would be to reestablish government for the people as promised by
the constitution." [Endnote 1]

A Vision for the Future. This indeed is the vision of the National
Performance Review--a government turnaround, like that of America's best
corporations, to reestablish government for the people. These real
customers will drive government services. Agencies will constantly ask
customers what they want and whether they are satisfied with what they
are getting. Agencies will post performance standards, measure
performance in terms of customer satisfaction, and allocate resources to
maximize such satisfaction. Front-line workers will be the primary
sources of ideas on how to deliver better services for less. And the
federal government will set its goal as providing customer service to
equal the best in business.

Three agencies with the bulk of the government's contacts with the
public--the IRS, Social Security Administration, and Postal
Service--have already begun to work with customer service standards.
Each of these agencies has a significant customer service program. Their
standards address specific dimensions of customer service, such as
waiting times and courtesy. Each is publishing its standards and posting
them on the walls of offices where it has contact with the public.

One route for agencies to understand what their customers want is
through the use of surveys. This means more surveys will need to be
reviewed and approved under the Paperwork Reduction Act. The Office of
Management and Budget (OMB), which is responsible for these reviews, is
looking to streamline its procedures. OMB should delegate its approval
authority to departments that are able to comply with the requirements
of the Act. OMB should provide training, advice, and interagency
coordination. OMB should also clarify guidance on the use of public
focus groups as a source of input and streamline the process to renew
survey approvals.

Taken collectively, the actions recommended in this report put
government's focus squarely on the customer where it belongs. With this
focus, all the lessons from both the public and private sector say that
rework, make work, and unnecessary tasks fall away, and productivity
soars.

Endnote

1. Services to the Citizen Intergovernmental Task Force, We the People (
July 1993). (Conference report.)