Emerging Trends in Customer Experience

The federal government has long struggled to provide the kinds of customer experience and service delivery that promulgates the private sector. Lacking a centralized blueprint for defining “customers” or service delivery and what metrics to collect, agencies were left alone to decide how to serve customers—often to poor results.

But efforts undertaken by the previous two administrations—and continued under President Joe Biden—are baking customer experience principles and best practices into agency policy. For example, the White House recently made significant updates to Section 280 of its Circular A-11 guidance, a policy that dictates how federal agencies define customer experience and deliver services. In a first, the guidance directs the Office of Management and Budget to identify “priority life events” that require members of the public to engage with multiple federal programs, agencies or levels of government. The guidance also expanded the government’s definition of a customer.

In concert with White House efforts, the new federal chief information officer has signaled diversity and accessibility are keys to improving customer experience collectively across government. But the work ahead is significant: A report found nearly half of the government’s most popular websites do not meet accessibility requirements.

Meanwhile, Congress is considering numerous pieces of legislation that could improve how agencies solicit public feedback and improve the speed and quality of services they deliver. In this ebook, Nextgov addresses these and other trends in customer experience. 

Download this free ebook today.