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Guidance on building better digital services in government
Government contact centers are centralized hubs for the public to access information, request services, and receive assistance.
Contact centers provide a centralized point of access, consolidating diverse services and information under one umbrella. This alleviates the burden on the public to navigate complex organizational structures to reach the agency they need. By streamlining access, contact centers empower individuals to engage with government services effectively, fostering a sense of ease and trust.
Following relevant laws, policies, and guidance, the Contact Center Center of Excellence (CoE) developed a 15-play Playbook for federal agencies that are looking to modernize and optimize their contact centers. While not every play will apply to your agency, these plays will get you started.
Low-cost, low-lift actions that any federal employee can take to improve customer experience.
Many things can impact the service quality, economics, and sustainability of your government contact center. This section provides insight on various aspects of operating and managing a contact center to help you improve its performance.
A contact center is supported by many technologies designed to enhance the customer experience, improve the operating and management efficiency, or lower the overall costs of running a contact center.
This guide provides you with the information to get a governement contact center started
The Contact Center is no longer viewed as only a center to receive complaints, but as a valued operation in an agency’s strategy to deliver a quality customer experience.
A customer service platform that helps the public navigate the government space by providing topical information and services in English and Spanish.
Explore methods of service delivery that improve customer experience in government contact centers.
It has been a year since USA.gov and USAGov en Español were relaunched using human-centered design principles. Using task backlog, the USAGov team has addressed content gaps, improved discoverability, and implemented technical updates. Through usability tests, visitor comments, and click behavior the team was able to unravel and respond to user feedback and unmet needs, leading to noticeable increases in visitor satisfaction and task accomplishment. Moving forward, the focus will shift to enhancing public engagement with the government, improving the search for benefits-related content, and exploring interactive and personalized user experiences.— via USA.gov
Every day, live agents at USA.gov’s Public Experience (PX) Contact Center answer questions from the public about government benefits and services. Learn how the PX Contact Center develops a workforce of excellent agents, using immersive onboarding, tailored and continuous training, feedback loops, and calibration meetings to empower their agents to deliver accurate information. USA.gov’s system for employee and contact center management ensures that every customer interaction leaves a lasting impact.— via USA.gov
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) recognizes the need for governments, states, territories, tribes, crisis centers, and partners to speak with one voice to ensure there is a clear understanding about what 988 is and how it will work. We encourage you to use these communication outreach materials and build upon them with your community coalitions to meet the needs of your specific audiences.
"Diga o marque 2": USAGov en Español’s New Approach to Interactive Voice Response—USAGov receives and responds to questions directly from the public in many ways: through social media, on page surveys on USA.gov and USAGov en Español, and through chats and calls. One powerful tool in the USAGov toolbelt is our interactive voice response (IVR) system in both English and Spanish through the USAGov Contact Center.— via USA.gov
In 2019, USA.gov received nearly half a million calls! Read about how they expanded their use of interactive voice response to better serve citizens and maximize their resources.— via USA.gov
Following relevant laws, policies, and guidance, the Contact Center Center of Excellence (CoE) developed a 15-play Playbook for federal agencies that are looking to modernize and optimize their contact centers. While not every play will apply to your agency, these plays will get you started.
Low-cost, low-lift actions that any federal employee can take to improve customer experience.
Many things can impact the service quality, economics, and sustainability of your government contact center. This section provides insight on various aspects of operating and managing a contact center to help you improve its performance.
A contact center is supported by many technologies designed to enhance the customer experience, improve the operating and management efficiency, or lower the overall costs of running a contact center.
This guide provides you with the information to get a governement contact center started
The Contact Center is no longer viewed as only a center to receive complaints, but as a valued operation in an agency’s strategy to deliver a quality customer experience.
A customer service platform that helps the public navigate the government space by providing topical information and services in English and Spanish.
34 posts
It has been a year since USA.gov and USAGov en Español were relaunched using human-centered design principles. Using task backlog, the USAGov team has addressed content gaps, improved discoverability, and implemented technical updates. Through usability tests, visitor comments, and click behavior the team was able to unravel and respond to user feedback and unmet needs, leading to noticeable increases in visitor satisfaction and task accomplishment. Moving forward, the focus will shift to enhancing public engagement with the government, improving the search for benefits-related content, and exploring interactive and personalized user experiences.— via USA.gov
Every day, live agents at USA.gov’s Public Experience (PX) Contact Center answer questions from the public about government benefits and services. Learn how the PX Contact Center develops a workforce of excellent agents, using immersive onboarding, tailored and continuous training, feedback loops, and calibration meetings to empower their agents to deliver accurate information. USA.gov’s system for employee and contact center management ensures that every customer interaction leaves a lasting impact.— via USA.gov
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) recognizes the need for governments, states, territories, tribes, crisis centers, and partners to speak with one voice to ensure there is a clear understanding about what 988 is and how it will work. We encourage you to use these communication outreach materials and build upon them with your community coalitions to meet the needs of your specific audiences.
"Diga o marque 2": USAGov en Español’s New Approach to Interactive Voice Response—USAGov receives and responds to questions directly from the public in many ways: through social media, on page surveys on USA.gov and USAGov en Español, and through chats and calls. One powerful tool in the USAGov toolbelt is our interactive voice response (IVR) system in both English and Spanish through the USAGov Contact Center.— via USA.gov
In 2019, USA.gov received nearly half a million calls! Read about how they expanded their use of interactive voice response to better serve citizens and maximize their resources.— via USA.gov
The team at USAGov analyzed more than 13,000 chats and phone calls from the public, in both English and Spanish, and then tagged these inquiries by popular topic area. These are the top questions our government-wide contact center received over the last four months.— via USA.gov
When you want to do a usability test, sometimes you have to step out of your comfort zone and get creative to get the job done. That’s just what happened to us. We’re well practiced at usability testing at USAGov—in person, remote, hallway tests, first-click tests—all of these things we manage without blinking an eye.
Journey maps are a visual representation of a customer’s end to end journey with your product or service. They are a powerful tool for exploring key interactions and experiences with your organization, programs, and/or services. Journey maps describe a customer’s entire journey, even the parts that occur before and after contact with your organization. They
I recently wrapped up a series of user interviews as part of a review of our judiciary-wide intranet in order to provide better digital services to our customers (and yes, our internal users are our customers, not just the general public).
Thirteen years in digital is an eon, and on the eve of its 13th birthday, we at USA.gov found ourselves reckoning with a mid-life crisis. In the thirteen years since Firstgov.gov was launched (and ten years for FirstGov en Español), the sheer volume and sophistication
The federal government has caught the customer experience bug. We want our customers to complete their tasks with minimal effort using a streamlined process. If they need personal help, we want it to be quick, polite, and provide the best answer. But that personal help frequently requires a team of highly skilled, dedicated people—a contact
DigitalGov University has added podcasts to our suite of offerings on DigitalGov, featuring interviews and discussions with leaders in the DigitalGov community. For the first edition, we talked to Diane Devera, “Voice of the IVR” for the USA.gov Contact Center.
For more than 40 years, Warren Snaider has been working at the General Services Administration providing government information to the public. A Senior Federal Information Specialist, Snaider has witnessed government contact centers evolve as technology has changed the way people communicate and access information. Snaider first joined the Federal Information Center in Sacramento in 1972.
Users have questions. Your content and website navigation can help them find answers, or potentially cause frustration. One tool for answering questions is up for debate: are FAQ sections still relevant in 2015, or are they a relic of bygone days? Nielsen Norman Group recently published two articles arguing for the continued use and usefulness
Social media tools can amplify your agency’s message, but they are also a meeting space for two-way conversations. They can be a key tool to resolve user issues and deliver excellent customer service. This is true for agencies in every corner of the government space. In honor of our monthly contact center theme, we reached
SMS messages are an excellent way to reach audiences. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) saw SMS messages as an opportunity to reach the public for the implementation of their Mobile Health Behavioral Intervention Programs. NCI has 15 SMS based programs, including HealthyYouTxt, a program designed to help users live a healthier lifestyle, and SmokeFreeTxt, a
In May 2014, Sarah Crane discussed the importance of structured content, APIs and the development of a “Create Once, Publish Everywhere” (COPE) strategy at USA.gov via a three part video series. After my recent post about a world without Web pages, Sarah and I connected and we discussed the challenges she has experienced during the
The Government Contact Center Council (G3C) has been working with DigitalGov University to host events for the contact center community across the federal government.
At the end of last year, DigitalGov posted an article predicting that 2016 would be the year of the customer. Stephanie Thum, Vice President of Customer Experience at Export-Import Bank, looked at the great strides made in federal customer service in 2014 and called it the year of “planting seeds.” She then pointed to 2015
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