From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Federal Agencies' Customer Service Efforts Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with Chris Mihm, Managing Director, Strategic Issues Related GAO Work: GAO-15-84: Managing for Results: Selected Agencies Need to Take Additional Efforts to Improve Customer Service Released: October 2014 [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's October 2014. Federal agencies provide many types of services to the public, such as border and airport security and visitor education in national parks and forests. But how do they know that these services are meeting people's needs? A team led by Chris Mihm, Managing Director of GAO's Strategic Issues team, recently reviewed how selected federal agencies are evaluating and improving their customer service. GAO's Jacques Arsenault sat down with Chris to talk about what they found. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] Your report looked at agencies and programs that affect a lot of people. Can you give some examples of the services they offer? [ Chris Mihm: ] Sure. We looked at 5 agencies that are among those that have the most direct contact with citizens in a customer context, and so, for example, we looked at the Forest Service and how they manage recreational facilities. We looked at Department of Education and how they award student loans under the Direct Loan Program. We looked at Homeland Security and border patrol, customs and border patrol, on their inspections of individuals, and other agencies as well. So we really wanted to focus on those agencies that are among the top in terms of having citizen interaction in a customer standpoint. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] So, did the agencies do a good job of providing customer service? [ Chris Mihm: ] Well, I'd say we didn't look at that part directly, but the concern is, is they really don't know at the end of the day, and I don't mean that in a way that I doubt that they're, you know, that they're satisfying customers. I mean they all do some comment cards and surveys, and so it's not as though they're getting a lot of hate mail or anything like that, but part of the message that we had is that they need to do a much better job in understanding what the customer expectations are and in measuring how they're doing against those expectations, and then reporting back to citizens on that. That's where the big gap is, and so even if they are doing well, they don't know that, and, more importantly, if there's things they could do to improve, they're not able to identify and target improvement opportunities. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] Along those lines, your report talks about the need for customer service standards to have performance goals and measurements. Can you tell me why this is important? [ Chris Mihm: ] That's a great question. I mean, there's a cliche in kind of the performance movement is that if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there, and so that's the importance of setting goals is to help you really target and pinpoint your, you know, your strategies and how, what you want to do. What this means in the customer context is you have to find out from your customers what's most important to them as part of the interaction, and so, for example, when you're looking at the Park Service, there we were looking at how they provide visitor and interpretive services to people, they need to be able to reach out and say to customers, what do you really need? What is a good experience from a visitor's standpoint for you as a citizen? Then they can set goals associated with that, measure their performance towards that, and then if there's a gap, they know where to improve, and if they're hitting their targets, they know that they're meeting the citizen needs. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] So what recommendations is GAO making to federal agencies to improve customer service? [ Chris Mihm: ] We had recommendations to each of the 5 agencies depending on where they were on basically a continuum of setting goals, measuring performance, and then reporting back to citizens about how they were doing. Fortunately, I think, from a government-wide standpoint is that the administration has established a cross agency priority goal dealing with customer service, and so they will be reaching out, they, the Administration, will be reaching out to all the agencies that have citizen contact and making sure that they are appropriately focused on service standards and delivering quality services to customers. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] And, finally, what do you see for taxpayers as the bottom line of this report? [ Chris Mihm: ] The bottom line is that as taxpayers in a comprehensive sense, we're owners of the government, but on an individual sense we're customers when we interact with government, and as customers, agencies have a responsibility to know what our needs are, satisfying those needs to the best of their abilities, measuring how they're doing, and then reporting back to us on how they're doing. Those are all agency responsibilities, and they're key to improving the customer experience with the federal government. [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO.gov and be sure to tune in to the next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.