New Kid in Town: The Customer Experience Community
Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) Goals prioritize activities that all agencies must tackle each year. An important CAP Goal for 2015 addresses customer service and compels federal agencies to improve the quality of service the public receives from the federal government. To build on the momentum of this goal, the government Customer Experience Community of Practice (CX-COP) was launched in early 2015.
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The CX-COP supports collaboration and sharing among government customer experience practitioners. The group is sponsored by GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, which also sponsors several other government Communities of Practice. The CX-COP, though it is the newest community, already has over 450 members from over 70 government agencies, with more people joining every day.
Bring Customers to the Table
“To provide great customer service, bring your customers to the table,” says Stephanie Thum, Vice President of Customer Experience at the Export-Import Bank, in a recent DigitalGov podcast. Taking this idea to heart, we recently surveyed CX-COP members to discover their training needs, so we could design a training program that would be truly helpful and relevant for agencies. 20% of members responded, and here are the most requested training needs:
Topics
- Measurement (tools, analytics, turning customer data into action)
- Culture (building a customer-centric culture, employee engagement)
- Collaboration (sharing success stories, supporting shared customers)
Level of Training
- Intermediate
Preferred Platforms
- Online webinars
- In-person seminars
- Hands-on, in-person workshops
What’s Next?
This is just the beginning! In our recent survey, CX-COP members also told us that people join this community so they can share ideas and solve problems with colleagues across government. To support this collaborative problem-solving, the CX-COP team is knee-deep in planning activities and developing content to help agencies meet the CAP Goal priorities.
- We have a new community page to keep members connected to the latest government and industry best practices and training opportunities.
- We distribute a weekly e-newsletter that features CX news and articles from across the Internet, delivered right to your inbox. Sign up to join the listserv and receive our e-newsletter. Note, a U.S. government (.gov, .mil, etc.) email address is required. (Have a question or need help with registration? Email us.)
- In June we hosted our first guest speaker, Jonathan Stahl from the Washington Nationals Baseball Club. Stahl shared the Nat’s strategy to enhance the customer experience for both customers and employees. Check out the event recap.
- We’re planning at least one new training event each month and collaborating with CAP Goal teams and other stakeholders to build a toolkit to help agencies improve the customer experience.
The time has come for government to get serious about improving customer service. According to Forrester’s Rick Parrish, “Improving the federal customer experience is a national security imperative.” We invite you to join us as we work together to enhance the public’s experience with government.
