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Articles by Kathy Conrad
The Three Keys to Providing More Equitable Government Services
The federal government is striving to address longstanding barriers to equity and access in the programs and services it delivers, as it should. Unlike private companies, which can choose customers to target, government has a mandate to serve everyone, and it should be the leader in designing and delivering equitable services. Though government has established a vision for equitable government services, it’s still catching up with reality for many of its customers.
How fabricators can continue to survive the pandemic
The current slowdown gives metal fabricators a chance to refocus their businesses during the pandemic. Getty Images Editor’s Note: This feature is adapted from the “Surviving the Shutdown: 3 Key Areas of Focus” webinar, presented by Russ Branton of FMCS Co. LLC and Kathy Conrad of Salvagnini America Inc. on June 25. An industry survey was conducted in the early summer to get a snapshot of where metal manufacturing companies are today.
Building a Better Experience for Government’s Customers
By Eric Keller and Kathy Conrad The coronavirus pandemic has required nearly all organizations—from restaurants to schools to banks—to drastically rethink how they deliver services. It has been the same for government. The pandemic shuttered federal field offices, disrupted contact center operations, overwhelmed some online systems serving the public and moved many employees to full-time telework.
What Citizens Are Trying to Tell Us
Agencies have long struggled with how to both improve customer experience and reduce cost to serve. For many, these have seemed competing ambitions. By using new channels, particularly social media and artificial intelligence and advanced analytics tools, it’s now increasingly possible to more efficiently deliver enhanced services that improve customer experience.
How Leaders Can Get Customer Experience Results in 2019
The administration took promising steps in 2018 to improve the experience of citizens and others receiving government services. In June, the Office of Management and Budget issued thorough guidance requiring agencies with the highest-impact public services to collect, analyze and report insights from their customers, prepare plans for improving the customer experience, and appoint an official responsible for progress.
Ask the Expert: The kids are back at school - so head lice might be, too
Head lice is a common problem that affects millions of school-age children and their families each year. The good news is that head lice are treatable with many prescription and non-prescription products. Head lice are parasites. They are found on human heads and are spread by personal contact or the sharing of combs, brushes, hats and other items of clothing. Infection with head lice is called pediculosis, which is different from the lice that cause body and pubic-hair infections.
Overcoming a Big Obstacle to Citizen Feedback
Timely, thorough customer feedback is critical to meeting citizens’ rising expectations for convenient and personalized government services. However, the Paperwork Reduction Act presents a major barrier. For example, it took the Office of the Inspector General at the Defense Department more than a year to get approval for a simple five-question survey asking for users’ opinions about its website. Congress is moving to ease restrictions that limit agencies’ ability to seek feedback from the public.
Government’s Customer Experience Comeback
With the release of the fiscal 2019 budget proposal on Feb. 12, the White House sent a strong signal that improving customer interactions with government will be a major management priority. The administration plans to release the president’s management agenda this month, with specifics on how it will ensure government is accountable to the public, according to the budget proposal.
How to Improve Government Customer Experience
The private sector sets a high bar for customer experience as companies continue to innovate and exceed expectations in many realms, leaving federal organizations in catch-up mode. According to Forrester’s 2017 Federal Customer Experience Index, 80 percent of federal agencies measured have overall scores that fall into the “mostly poor” or “very poor” categories, compared with 22 percent of private sector companies. Agencies are trying to up their game.
Want to Improve Government Customer Experience? Focus On Employee Morale
Federal efforts to improve agency interactions with citizens will fall short unless employees are fully invested in the process, understand the goals, have a say in how to make improvements and are rewarded for their work. Recent studies of the private sector have found that employee engagement goes hand in hand with the quality of customer experience they provide.
Five Ways to Reform Government With a Focus on the Customer
President Trump’s executive order on reorganizing government and guidance from the Office of Management and Budget require agencies to develop proposals to make government lean, accountable and efficient, and to improve customer experience.
What Government Can Learn from Business about Customer Experience
The White House recently launched a SWAT team to bring ideas from the business world to help make government more effective: the White House Office of American Innovation. One of its primary goals is to drive improvements that will benefit citizens as the customers of government, according to Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to the president, who will lead the office. Not all lessons from the private sector apply to government.
How the Next Administration Can Improve Customer Experience
Signature initiatives to improve government operations have been a hallmark of recent administrations. The Clinton administration’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government program sought, with some success, to streamline the federal bureaucracy and align programs more closely with citizen needs.
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