OMB SUPPORTING STATEMENT FOR
COMPLIANCE CENTER EXAMINATION – OPTION YEAR 1 CY08
TO MEASURE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
IRS has replaced its traditional measures of accomplishment with a balanced measurement system consisting of business results, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction The Compliance Center Examination section within the Compliance Operating Unit (OU) of Wage and Investment will be responsible for responding to customer technical and account inquiries, resolving customer account issues, providing account settlement (payment options), and working related issues. As an important customer interface for Wage & Investment, Compliance Center Examination will need feedback from customers to continuously improve its operations. This initiative is part of the Service-wide effort to establish a system of balanced organizational performance measures mandated by the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998. This is also a result of Executive Order 12862, which requires all government agencies to survey their customers and incorporate customer preferences in their process improvement efforts.
The key goals of the survey are to track customer satisfaction at the five Wage and Investment Compliance Center Examination (CC Exam) sites and nationwide and to identify operational improvements.
Customer Satisfaction Survey
The customer satisfaction survey questionnaire is attached. Completion of the survey is expected to take approximately three minutes. The objective of the survey will be to gauge customer expectations and perceptions about the CC Exam process. The questionnaire is based on the vendor’s Net Impression methodology, which asks respondents to evaluate various aspects of their experience and to provide an overall summary evaluation. The questionnaire was developed based on inputs from a focus group with customers who had a recent closed case with Compliance Center Examination. The results should facilitate more effective management of W&I CC Exam by:
Providing insight from the customer’s perspective about possible improvements.
Providing useful input for program evaluation and execution at the programmatic and field office level of service delivery.
The survey will include several rating questions evaluating service delivery during the CC Exam process as well as several demographic items. In addition, ample space will be provided for suggestions for improvement.
Survey scoring for this contract will be based on the Customer Satisfaction Survey Score response average to the keystone question – “How would you rate your overall experience with the way your case was handled?” Questions will utilize a 5-point rating scale, with 1 being very dissatisfied and 5 being very satisfied. All survey responses generated will be confidential. The vendor shall ensure that taxpayers responding to the survey are guaranteed anonymity.
Disclosure, Security & Confidentiality
Confidentiality will be safeguarded. The data collection process, participants will be identified to IRS personnel by their first names only. In addition, no participant’s names will be mentioned in the focus group report. Participants will be advised that observers from the IRS may be behind the one-way mirror and that their comments will be audio and videotapes.
The survey will not contain tax return or taxpayer information. Survey participants will not be identified in any of the documents or files used for this project. We will limit and control the amount of information we collect to those items that are necessary to accomplish the research questions. We will carefully safeguard the security of data utilized as well as the privacy of the survey respondents. We will apply the fair information and record-keeping practices to ensure protection of all survey respondents. The criterion for disclosure laid out in the Privacy Act, the Freedom of Information Act, and section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code provides for the protection of information as well as its releases to authorized recipients.
We will apply fair information and record-keeping practices to ensure protection of all taxpayers. The criterion for disclosure laid out in the Privacy Act, the Freedom of Information Act, and section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, provides for the protection of taxpayer information as well as its release to authorized recipients.
Design and Methodology
The sample universe will consist of taxpayers with closed CC Exam cases controlled in the AIMS database beginning with cases closed in January 2007 The vendor will select 3,333 cases per year and target 2,000 completed interviews per year (400 per site per quarter).
The vendor will administer the survey by mail on a monthly basis January 1, 2008 - December 31, 2008. Standard procedures will be used in order to obtain the highest response rate possible for the mail survey. These will include: 1) an advance letter about the survey; 2) the initial survey with a cover letter; 3) a postcard reminder; and, 4) a second letter and survey to non-respondents.
The vendor will, on a semi-annual basis, summarize the quantitative ratings and produce a national report showing customer satisfaction scores on all CC Exam survey items and overall improvement priorities for the function. The vendor will deliver national reports each semi-annual period. On an annual basis, the vendor will prepare five site reports containing individual site scores on each of the survey items and improvement priorities for the individual sites. The vendor will include any relevant database variables in the analysis and will weight the survey responses as necessary to reflect accurately the entire customer base.
Reports of survey findings will be distributed to the IRS semi-annually. Each report will be delivered approximately seven weeks after the survey cut-off date for the quarter.
Evaluation
For the reports, the vendor will use basic and advanced statistical techniques including, but not limited to, analysis of variance and the prioritization of improvement priorities using vendor’s established technique.
Survey counts and overall response rates.
The overall level of customer satisfaction with services provided by CC Exam
The averages and frequencies for all rating questions.
The differences in satisfaction ratings and attitudes across customer segments.
Which areas of service, in priority order, CC Exam should focus its resources to improve overall satisfaction.
Cross tabulations of variables for the customer surveys.
Analysis of the relationship between survey responses.
Analysis of the one open-ended question for improvement suggestions. The vendor shall transcribe and code the responses to the open-ended question and will conduct content analysis in order to provide CC Exam with the top ten categories of concern.
Estimates of the Burden of Data Collection
The CC Exam survey has been designed to minimize burden on the taxpayer. The time that a respondent takes to complete the survey has been carefully considered and only the most important areas are being surveyed. The average time of survey completion is expected to be 3 minutes, plus 2 minutes to read the pre-notification letter. The questions are generally one sentence in structure and on an elementary concept level.
We have made every attempt in designing this survey to maximize response rate.
Using the response rate of 60 percent, the total burden in hours is estimated to be 167hours (2,000 surveys x 3 minutes / 60 minutes + 2,000 pre-notification letters x 2 minutes / 60 minutes).
For non-respondents, the total number of burden hours is estimated to be 45 hours (1,333 pre-notification letters x 2 minutes/ 60 minutes).
The grand total burden is estimated to be 212 hours for the year.
Other Information
The following information will be provided to the Human Capital Office within 60 days after the close of the survey data collection operations:
Findings: A brief summary of significant findings that were evidenced in the results.
Actions taken or lessons learned: A brief summary of any action taken or lessons learned as a result of the findings.
Number of completed questionnaires
Cost Estimate
The estimated cost for administering this survey is $78,443.00.
Statistical Contact
For questions regarding the study or questionnaire design or the statistical methodology, contact:
Elaine Lowitz
Pacific Consulting Group
399 Sherman Avenue, Suite 1
Palo Alto, California 94306
(650) 327-8108
| File Type | application/msword |
| File Title | CRT |
| Author | VaNee Thomsen |
| Last Modified By | qhrfb |
| File Modified | 2007-10-16 |
| File Created | 2007-10-03 |