SOI-369 - Supporting Statement

OMB #1545-1349

The Paperwork Reduction Act requires that the IRS display an OMB control number on all public information requests. The OMB Control Number for this study is 1545-1349. Also, if you have any comments regarding the time estimates associated with this study or suggestions on making this process simpler, please write to the, Internal Revenue Service, Tax Products Coordinating Committee, SE:W:CAR:MP:T:T:SP, 1111 Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC  20224.

OMB SUPPORTING STATEMENT

STUDY TO MEASURE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

CCE TOLL-FREE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SURVEY– CY2010

March 2010 - DECEMBER 2010

TIRNO-05-Z-00014

Introduction

IRS has replaced the traditional measures of accomplishment with a balanced measurement system consisting of business results, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction. The Toll-free function within the Compliance organization of Wage and Investment (W&I) Division is 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 W&I, Toll-free needs feedback from customers to continuously improve its operations. This initiative is part of the Service-wide 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 Compliance Center Exam Toll-free Customer Satisfaction Survey are to investigate what specific actions IRS can take to improve customer satisfaction with the current CCE Toll-free W&I service and to gauge the effectiveness of changes to the Toll-free W&I service. The survey is used to detect changes in customer satisfaction before and after specific changes made to the CCE Toll-free W&I services such as adding new scripts and features to CCE Toll-free W&I. This project is expected to continue the customer satisfaction research conducted via the IRS’s internal automated voice response system.

Telephone Focus Groups

In advance of conducting the telephone survey, the contractor will conduct three focus groups among users of the CCE Toll-Free system. The purpose of the sessions will be to obtain a more in-depth, qualitative understanding of the study. Respondents will be recruited by telephone and participants will be offered an honorarium of $50 each. We will recruit 27 people for 18 to participate; some recruited people may not actually participate. The screening guide is attached, as is the moderator’s discussion guide for the three one-hour teleconference discussions.

Dates of Collection Begin/End

Data collection runs the March 2010 through December 2010.

Disclosure, Security & Privacy

Taxpayer privacy 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 focus groups shall be administered by telephone. Participants will be recruited from a list of taxpayers who have completed a mail survey and agreed to participate in follow-up research. Participants will be contacted and recruited using the attached recruiting guide. They will be offered an honorarium of $50 each for their participation. This amount is a standard fee for individual taxpayers and has successfully been approved by OMB in the past.

Participants will dial into a central toll-free number during the designated date and time to conduct the focus group. The session will take up to one hour of their time. There will be three one-hour focus groups in total.

A summary report of the focus group findings will be prepared by the contractor.

Evaluation

The vendor will prepare a summary report in Microsoft Word that summarizes focus group findings, and including information such as date of each focus group and number of participants.

Estimates of the Burden of Data Collection

Focus Groups

The focus group sessions are designed to minimize taxpayer burden by not requiring any travel. The burden estimate for the focus group effort follows:

Recruitment: 27 recruited participants x 6 minutes = 3 hours; 270 non-participants x 1 minute = 5 hours

Focus group sessions: 18 people x 60 minutes = 18 hours

Total Focus group burden hours = 26

Estimated Cost

The estimated cost for this survey is $9,961.00.

Other Information

The following information will be provided to Human SOI 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.

• Taxpayer participation (number of requests for taxpayer participation and number of interviews completed).

• Dates on which the data collection began and ended.

• Cost (excluding regular salaries of IRS employees).

Statistical Contact

For questions regarding the study, questionnaire design, or the statistical methodology, contact:

Elaine Chan

Pacific Consulting Group

399 Sherman Avenue, Suite 1

Palo Alto, California 94306

(650) 327-8108

W&I CCE Toll-free OMB, CY2010