Government Contact Center Council (G3C) meeting, June 12, 2014 Mary Ann Monroe, Director, Contact Center Services Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, GSA

1. U.S. General Services AdministrationU.S. General Services Administration
USA.gov Contact Center
Case Study: JD Power Assessment &
Customer Satisfaction Results
Mary Ann Monroe
Director, Contact Center Services
Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies

2. Overview of Presentation
GSA/JD Power and Associates collaboration
• Rationale
• Goals
• Results
• Moments of truth
• Lessons learned
• Questions and Answers

3. USA.gov Contact Center
• Respond to the public inquiries about government information, programs &
services; provide contact center services to customer agencies
• Web site: USA.gov & GobiernoUSA.gov
• Channels: Telephone, Email, Web Chat - English/Spanish
• Self Service: Answers.USA.gov/Respuestas.USA.gov
• Volume FY13: 600,000 inquiries, 6.5 million FAQ hits

4. GSA/JD Power Collaboration
Rationale
Operational Performance Assessment (OPA)
• Comprehensive analysis of contact center operations to
determine areas of strength and opportunity
• Use results to inform our strategic direction
Customer Satisfaction (CSat) Surveys
• Understand customer satisfaction drivers across channels
• Identify areas of impact and improvement on customer
experiences
• Validate our current knowledge in an effort to create a
customer driven culture

5. Results - Strengths
• Leadership - Committed, Engaged
• Staff - Highly skilled, dedicated, high retention
• Employee Engagement - Input sought, incorporated
• Quality Assurance - Consistent, engaged staff, solid process
• CSat - Collected post interaction, customer verbatims
communicated
• Technology - Robust
• Key Performance Indicators - Balanced
• Practices - Custom responses vs. scripts

6. Results - Areas of Opportunity
Marketing and Branding
• Expectations need to be established early and often
Insight into Customer
• Improve understanding of customer
• Customer identification by channel
Customer Satisfaction/Voice of Customer
• Provide more actionable data
• Correlate results to Information Specialist & interaction
• Measure “overall satisfaction” consistently on all channels
• Increase survey sample size - telephone interactions

7. Call us at 1 (800) FED INFO (333-4636) – Our
information specialists will answer your
government questions between 8:00 AM and 8:00
PM Eastern Time, Monday through Friday, except
federal holidays.
If you have a question about federal agencies,
programs, benefits, or services, the National Contact
Center is only a phone call away.

8. Results - Areas of Opportunity Cont.
Define First Contact Resolution (Key Performance Indicator)
Quality Assurance
• Take it to next level
• Include “superior” performance & examples
• Increase call/screen recording
• Adjust Supv. time to increase coaching on superior
performance & examples
Ensure partnership and alignment between GSA and Contractor

9. Results - Areas of Opportunity Cont.
Execution on Contacts
• Set expectations - tell customer what you can/can’t do and why
• Use information collected from customer or don’t collect - created
poor perception of timeliness
• Timeliness - execute email as quickly as possible, help customer
understand what follow-up is coming
• Personalize responses whenever possible (use first name, location,
etc.)

10. Results - Areas of Opportunity Cont.
IVR
• Simplify options, descriptions, and limit “the tree” as much as possible
• Reduce number of recorded messages
Key Performance Indicators
• First Contact Resolution

12. Tackling the Results
1. Owned the results
2. Created Action Plan
3. Categorized Actions and Developed Milestones
• Assigned ownership: GSA & Contractor
• Categories: Operational (Quality, Training), Communication,
Branding, IVR
• Timeframe: Long Term, Short Term, Specific Dates
4. Developed metrics to define success, measure improvements

13. Actions - GSA
• Define USA.gov brand
Web site, Contact Center & Information
Specialists
• Set realistic expectations for the customer
• Define customer centric culture we aim to achieve
• Define & measure FCR KPI
• Improve CSat surveys & process
• Improve IVR
• Add Customer Relationship Management

14. Actions - Contractor
Coach, Train Information Specialists
• Communication/Execution
• Empathy, personalization
• Contact management
• Shape expectations
Develop Interaction Models
• Set standards for excellence

15. Results – E-mail/Web Chat Satisfaction Scores
2014 E-mail Web Chat
January/February 56.35% 83.6%
March/April 62.3% 93.4%
Percentage of survey respondents who answered “Excellent” or “Very
good” to “How do you rate the quality of the services we provide?”

16. Industry Best Practices
First Call Resolution – Moment of Truth
• 90%+ in certified call centers
• Crucial driver in overall satisfaction
Empower/engage your staff to define most common calls
Create internal best practices and ‘living’ knowledge base to draw from
• Satisfaction drops nearly 30% if Specialist does not have all the
information available

17. Industry Best Practices
Set expectations around ability to solve problems
• Empower Specialists to solve more problems
Be personal and reduce the Level of Effort
• Greet warmly, use opportunity to educate callers about other
service channels
• Follow-up, if applicable

18. Call to Action
1. Don’t be afraid to take a hard look at your program
• Review your interaction models
• Review your IVR tree
2. Set clear expectations for customers
3. Align & deliver services that meet the needs & expectations of
your customer
4. Use results to improve and transform service delivery & customer
experiences
5. Make interactions easy, enjoyable, efficient

19. Contact Information
202 – 579 - 5127
@MonroeMaryann
MaryAnn Monroe
maryann.monroe@gsa.gov