Generic Clearance for SBA Customer Experience Data Collections

SECTION 280—MANAGING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND IMPROVING SERVICE DELIVERY

SECTION 280 – MANAGING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND IMPROVING SERVICE
DELIVERY
Table of Contents
280.1
280.2
280.3
280.4
280.5
280.6
280.7
280.8
280.9
280.10
280.11
280.12
280.13

To which agencies does this section apply?
Who is a Federal Government customer?
What is Federal Government customer experience?
What is Federal Government service delivery?
What is the purpose of implementing this guidance?
How should agencies manage customer experience?
How should customer experience be measured?
How should customer experience be reflected in the agency’s Annual Performance Plan?
What programs have been identified as High-Impact Service Provider (HISPs)?
What additional steps should HISPs take to manage customer experience?
What shall the data dashboards submitted to OMB include?
When are the data dashboards due?
What shall HISP CX Action Plans include?
Summary of Changes

This section provides continued guidance to agencies on implementing the Federal Government’s
customer experience framework, and information for agencies on how to effectively manage
customer experience improvement efforts. Updates include additional information for agencies on
best practices for measuring and managing customer experience.

280.1

To which agencies does this section apply?

The general guidance in sections 280.2 through 280.8 are government-wide guiding principles that all
Executive Branch agencies can use to improve customer experience. High-Impact Service Providers
(HISPs), which are those Federal entities designated by OMB to have the most high-impact customer-facing
services (as defined in section 280.9), are required to implement the guidance in sections 280.10 through
280.13.
280.2

Who is a Federal Government customer?

For the purposes of this guidance, “customers” are individuals, businesses, and organizations that interact
with a Federal Government agency or program, either directly or via a Federal contractor.
280.3

What is Federal Government customer experience?

Customer experience (CX) refers to a combination of factors that result from touchpoints between an
individual, business, or organization and the Federal Government over the duration of an interaction and
relationship. These factors include ease/simplicity, efficiency/speed, and equity/transparency of the
process, effectiveness/quality of the service itself, and the helpfulness of service delivery employees.

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Similar to their application in the private sector, these factors can drive the overall satisfaction and
confidence/trust with the program, agency, and the government at large.
280.4

What is Federal Government service delivery?

“Service delivery” or “services” refers to the multitude of diverse interactions between a customer and
Federal agency such as applying for a benefit or loan, receiving a service such as healthcare or small
business counseling, requesting a document such as a passport or social security card, complying with a
rule or regulation such as filing taxes or declaring goods, utilizing resources such as a park or historical
site, or seeking information such as public health or consumer protection notices.
For example, Federal Government service types can be categorized as:
•

Administrative Basics: Requesting or renewing items that do not require an extensive eligibility
determination or multi-stage review processes such as getting a license, passport, or social security
card;

•

Programs and Benefits: Applying for or progressing through more complex government processes
and benefits such as immigration, Medicare, Veterans’ health services, or a small business loan;

•

Compliance: Completing required actions such as filing taxes, submitting information for or
engaging with an auditor, environmental reporting, or completing a survey mandated by law;

•

Leisure: Utilizing a public space such as national parks, historical sites, or museums; and

•

Informational: Providing knowledge-based resources to the public such as data sets, designing
labels, releasing warnings, or providing health recommendations.

280.5

What is the purpose of implementing this guidance?

Implementing the guidance specified in this section will establish a more consistent, comprehensive, robust,
and deliberate approach to CX across government. The purpose of this guidance is to:
•

Establish a CX-mindful culture across Federal Government services;

•

Improve customer satisfaction with Federal Government services;

•

Provide structure and consistency around how agencies/programs approach CX;

•

Identify program accountability and governance mechanisms;

•

Ensure high-impact programs are making progress in growing CX program maturity and applying
best practices;

•

Ensure high-impact programs are receiving and acting upon customer feedback to drive
performance improvement and service recovery;

•

Allow for government-wide comparative assessment of customer satisfaction; and

Section 280–2

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•
280.6

Ensure transparency through public reporting.
How should agencies manage customer experience?

The core CX functions are included in the CX program maturity model available at the CX MAX
Community page and are summarized in the categories of:
•

Measurement: Defining and instituting CX outcome measures to ensure accountability for
improving service delivery and communicate performance across the organization and to the
public;

•

Governance and Strategy: Institutionalizing CX by identifying executives and leaders responsible
and organizing supporting resources, the processes by which strategic decisions incorporate
customer perspective, and aligning CX strategy and activities with business decisions, initiatives
and investments within the agency’s broader mission and strategic priorities;

•

Culture and Organization: Acquiring and developing the talent required to incorporate and improve
CX within agency activities, and empowering all employees to adopt a CX mindset through
training, performance measurement, and rewards;

•

Customer Understanding: Implementing activities and conducting qualitative and quantitative
research across organizational silos to map intra-agency customer journeys, as well as inter-agency
journeys where applicable, to build and continually refine a knowledge base of the agency’s
customer segments and needs; and

•

Service Design: Adopting a customer-focused approach to the implementation of services,
involving and engaging customers in iterative development, leveraging digital technologies and
leading practices to deliver more efficient and effective touchpoints, and sharing lessons learned
across government.

Each fiscal year, agencies and programs that provide services to customers should complete a selfassessment across these maturity model categories and develop an action plan identifying focus areas for
increasing capacity and conducting specific CX activities based on the result. A self-assessment tool and
plan development template are provided on CX MAX Community page.
280.7

How should customer experience be measured?

At a minimum, Federal Government customer experience should be measured in seven domains:
• Overall: (1) Satisfaction, (2) Confidence/Trust
• Service: (3) Effectiveness/Quality
• Process: (4) Ease/Simplicity, (5) Efficiency/Speed, (6) Equity/Transparency
• People: (7) Employee Helpfulness
These domains have been developed in alignment with leading practices from both the private and public
sectors, including Fortune 500 companies, market research institutions, and international organizations.
Agencies should identify their highest-impact customer journeys (using customer volume, annual program
cost, and/or knowledge of customer priority as weighting factors) and select touchpoints/transactions within
those journeys to collect feedback. Initially, Federal customer experience will be focused on real-time
transaction-level measures, but agencies are encouraged to also solicit annual customer feedback reflecting

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on customers’ overall series of interactions, completion of journeys, and relationship with the agency.
Agencies are welcome to ask additional questions beyond these seven.
Example Measurement Levels:
•

Transaction: Measuring the customer perspective after a single, stand-alone interaction such as
after viewing a website to find a piece of information, purchasing a park pass, or speaking with a
contact center employee;

•

Journey: Measuring the customer perspective after a series of interactions, completion of a multistage process such as applying for and receiving/managing Federal student aid, filing taxes, or a
specific period of someone’s life such as transitioning from military active duty; and

•

Relationship: Measuring the customer perspective reflecting on the lifetime of their engagement
and series of transactions and journeys with a service providing agency.

In an effort to develop comparable, government-wide scores that will enable cross-agency benchmarking
(when relevant) and a general indication of an agency’s overall customer satisfaction, all programs
providing significant services directly to customers should measure their touchpoint/transactional
performance in as a real-time manner as possible, with respect to satisfaction and confidence/trust using the
following questions. Any requested modification to the wording of these statements must first be discussed
with OMB prior to implementation in order to maintain reporting comparability government-wide.
Responses should be assessed on a 5-point Likert scale (1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree)).

Overall Customer Experience Measure
Satisfaction
I am satisfied with the service I received from [Program/Service name].
Confidence/Trust
This interaction increased my confidence in [Program/Service name].
OR (choose one)
I trust [Agency/Program/Service name] to fulfill our country’s commitment to [relevant population].

In addition, services should also be measured in more detail across the following five categories, making
only minimal adjustments to the wording of the specific questions as necessary for mission and
circumstance-specific customization based on the type of service (see 280.4) or transaction type (for
example, it may not involve an interaction with an employee).

Service-Related Customer Experience Measures
Effectiveness / Quality
Service
My need was addressed / My issue was resolved.
Ease / Simplicity
It was easy to complete what I needed to do.
Process
Efficiency / Speed
It took a reasonable amount of time to do what I needed
to do.

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People
(If applicable for a transaction)

Equity / Transparency
I was treated fairly / I understand what was being asked
of me throughout the process.
Employee Interaction
Employees I interacted with were helpful.

In general, agencies should follow these best practices:
•

For applicable services, customer feedback should be obtained as close to the time of the transaction
as possible, and made available to program managers as frequently as possible;

•

To the extent possible, feedback collection mechanisms should be brief, thereby imposing minimal
burden on customers and sampling techniques may be used on high-volume transactions to reduce
burden, when appropriate;

•

Administer surveys applying best practices for optimizing response rate, for example, presenting
only the two overall measures and the opportunity to provide free text comments on the reasoning
for provided scores first, then presented the opportunity to respond to the remaining CX measures;

•

Agencies should have an overarching measurement and collection plan that captures timing for
journey and relationship customer feedback, taking stock of all data collection efforts and
minimizing survey fatigue;

•

Data should be coded so that it can be sorted for action by organizational units, such as office
location;

•

Relevant service level indicators (e.g., wait times) and usage statistics (e.g., leveraging the Digital
Analytics Program (DAP)) appropriate to each service should also be collected and measured; and

•

CX data collected, including customer feedback data and service level metrics, should be made
publicly available; for example, through the program website and the performance.gov CX
dashboards, and included in the Annual Performance Report (see 280.8).

As overall CX program maturity and capacity increases across the Federal Government, OMB may provide
guidance for additional types and levels of measurement.
Obtaining direct feedback from customers is critical to CX performance improvement. OMB is continuing
to work to streamline the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) approval for these measures and has provided
tools and templates to navigate the PRA clearance process on the CX MAX Community page.
280.8

How should customer experience be reflected in the agency’s Annual Performance Plan?

Agency Annual Performance Plans should include indicators for outcomes related to customer experience
and relevant service levels. This should include customer feedback data collected as described above in
280.7, as well as service level indicators (e.g., wait times, website utilization data) appropriate to their
program. More information on integrating this information into the Annual Performance Plan is included
in section 210.

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280.9

What programs have been identified as High-Impact Service Provider (HISPs)?

High-Impact Service Providers are those Federal entities designated by OMB that provide the most highimpact customer-facing services, either due to a large customer base or a high impact on those served by
the program. A HISP is one that interacts with the public to provide a transactional service or perform a
regulatory function in which time, money, or information is used to receive a good, service, or authorization.
HISPs will be reviewed and updated periodically by OMB. The current list of HISPs is available at
Performance.gov/HISPs.
280.10 What additional steps shall HISPs take to manage customer experience?
Given the significance of the services they provide, HISPs must:
•

Collect customer feedback for each of the indicators developed in accordance with 280.7;

•

Submit data dashboards to OMB quarterly, until feedback data is provided directly to
Performance.gov through an open application programming interface (API) (once developed);

•

Conduct an annual CX Self-Assessment (submitted to OMB by January 31st) and create a CX
Action Plan (submitted to OMB by March 31st) annually;

•

Begin to embed more customer-focused practices into their service design and delivery such as
conducting customer research through qualitative and quantitative research and journey mapping,
and continually user-testing program elements with customers to refine and improve.

OMB will meet with each HISP to provide support and clarification of expectations.
280.11 What shall the data dashboards submitted to OMB include?
Templates, examples, and instructions will be provided quarterly on the CX MAX Community page. The
template includes a section for reporting on the overall customer experience metrics, as well as values
across each of the service-related measure categories, a placeholder for program-specific service-level
indicators as appropriate, and space to summarize recent accomplishments as well as planned actions for
the following quarter.
280.12 When are the data dashboards due?
As part of quarterly reporting for the Improving Customer Experience Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) Goal,
programs will provide a data dashboard to OMB each quarter until data is reported directly through an API
to Performance.gov. Submittals will be due at the end of the second month following the end of the quarter.
See section 200.
HISPs with current capability to collect data related to the government-wide measures outlined in 280.7
shall begin reporting that data starting with FY 2019, Quarter 1. HISPs without the current capacity to
collect data using the government-wide measures must identify a target date for reporting of these metrics
not to exceed FY 2021, Quarter 1. The measurement of the government-wide customer experience metrics
and initial service-related measures will begin to be shared publicly in 2019.

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280.13 What shall HISP CX Action Plans include?
The content of CX Action Plans shall address the core CX functions outlined in 280.6 and include these
primary components:
•

Organization/Accountability: Describing how the HISP’s CX resources are organized, the
leadership responsible for CX, and what measures are in place to ensure program accountability
for CX performance improvement and service delivery;

•

CX Program Maturity: Providing the results of an annual self-assessment of the CX program
maturity using the maturity model noted above and describing initiatives underway or planned to
improve CX program maturity;

•

CX Data Collection and Metrics: Describing the types of data collected to support CX assessment,
the methods for obtaining feedback, and the methods used to report the data internally and publicly;
and

•

CX Delivery Improvement: Describing the initiatives underway or planned to improve the
program’s service delivery.

Templates for the Self-Assessment and Action Plan are provided on the CX MAX Community page. SelfAssessments shall be completed and submitted to OMB by January 31st, 2020. Self-Assessments are meant
to be a mechanism for an intra-agency convening and discussion of CX management, and HISPs should
engage at a minimum performance representatives, program leadership, front-line employees, and
functional representation such as IT, Operations, Communications, Digital, etc. Action Plans shall be
completed by March 31st, 2020, submitted to OMB, and will be made publicly available on
performance.gov.

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Section 280–7