CS-08-111 - Supporting Statement

CSCO OMB 2009

OMB SUPPORTING STATEMENT FOR

COMPLIANCE SERVICE COLLECTION OPERATION (CSCO)

CY 2009

TO MEASURE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

IRS, WAGE AND INVESTMENT DIVISION

January 2009 - Ongoing

TIRNO-05-Z-00014

Introduction

IRS has replaced its traditional measures of accomplishment with a balanced measurement system consisting of business results, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction The Compliance Service Collection Operation (CSCO) section within the Compliance Operating Unit (OU) of Wage and Investment (W&I) will be responsible for resolving balance due and return delinquency customer account issues through the mail, providing account settlement (payment options), and working related issues. As an important customer interface, CSCO 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 W&I CSCO sites 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 CSCO 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 results should facilitate more effective management of W&I CSCO 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 CSCO process as well as 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.

Design and Methodology

The sample will be a pulled from a universe data file of closed cases sent monthly to the contractor. These closed case files are compiled from each of the 5 CSCO site locations. The vendor will select 3,333 cases per year. Assuming a 60% response rate, this will yield 2,000 completed questionnaires per year (400 per site).

The vendor will administer the survey by phone.

The vendor will, on a semi-annual basis, summarize the quantitative ratings and produce a national report showing customer satisfaction scores on all CSCO survey items and overall improvement priorities for the function. The vendor will deliver a national report each semi-annual period. On an annual basis, the vendor will prepare 5 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 each semi-annual period. Each report will be delivered approximately seven weeks after the survey cut-off date for the semi-annual period.

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 CSCO

• 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, CSCO 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 CSCO with the top ten categories of concern.

Estimates of the Burden of Data Collection

The CSCO 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. This is based on the questionnaire consisting of 31, plus three open-ended questions. 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 for respondents in hours is estimated to be 234 hours (2,000 surveys x 5 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 44 hours (1,333 pre-notification letters x 2 minutes/ 60 minutes).

The grand total burden is estimated to be 278 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 $113,286.

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

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CSCO OMB SUPPORTING DOCUMENT CY09