**Citizen Service Times**

A newsletter dedicated to success stories in citizen service from around
the federal government

**Volume 1, Issue 1 -- August 1, 2006**

Please enjoy this Inaugural Issue of the **Citizen Service Times**. This
newsletter is dedicated to success stories in citizen service from
around the federal government. The featured topic for Volume 1, Issue 1
is implementation of the best practices set forth by the Citizen Service
Levels Interagency Committee (CSLIC).

*Many of CSLIC best practices are at work at the National Library of
Medicine:*

-   *fast turnaround for phone, mail and fax inquiries*

-   *low wait time for walk in customers*

-   *use of email auto replies*

-   *use of unique or identifying numbers for citizen email inquiries*

-   *use of quality monitoring on email responses to citizens*

-   *customer satisfaction is measured*

-   *three attempts are made to respond to emails*

**The National Library of Medicine's Book of Customer Service Success**

**By Ron Gordner, Senior Reference and Customer Service Librarian**

During FY2005, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) customer service
staff and contractors responded to 96,000 customer inquiries. This
includes 22,300 onsite inquiries and 73,500 offsite inquires (consisting
of 61,670 e-mail inquiries, 11,670 telephone inquiries, and 160 U.S.
mail or fax inquiries) for the year. NLM's virtual representative,
Cosmo, also responded to 4,600 questions during FY2005.

In measuring NLM's performance with CSLIC proposed benchmarks, the
Library's policies comply with most of the measurable standards,
guidelines, and recommendations. [NLM's customer service
policy](http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/ref_serv.html) states
that we respond to telephone inquiries that day, respond to e-mail
inquiries within 4 working days, and other letters and fax requests
within 7 days. Actual performance exceeds these policies.

We use Siebel as our customer service management system. The first level
customer service contractors and staff answer the simple or common
questions and reassign more complex queries to second level experts
within 2 business days. All patrons that e-

mail inquiries receive an auto-response that tells our turn around

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time. Those using Contact NLM forms also get an assigned unique Service
Request number. Siebel

also ties all correspondence to the Contact name for referral. Returned
e-mail responses are examined and staff try three times to resend the
response to the patron.

For the second quarter of FY2006, our Aspect telephone system reports
that agents handled 2,811 telephone calls, each averaging 4.38 minutes
in duration, with patrons experiencing an average wait time of 48
seconds, and an abandonment rate of 2%.

In the past 3 years, NLM has completed an interactive voice response
telephone and an online e-mail customer satisfaction survey. Analyzed
survey data and comments were used to improve stock replies, FAQs, and
customer service processes.

Staff e-mail responses are reviewed regularly for first contact
resolution, quality of content, plain language, and politeness by other
second level experts or work groups and that review determines any need
for further training and documentation. Siebel also allows us to quickly
collate product suggestions, comments, and complaints to identify
training needs, documentation gaps, and feedback for product development
and improvement.

With increased security measures at NLM, walk-in traffic has dropped and
we meet the metric of users not waiting more than 15 minutes for help.

Since 2003, NLM has also participated in American Customer Service Index
(ACSI) scoring of NLM resources such as consumer health sites
(MedlinePlus, NIHSeniorHealth), main web pages, and AIDS and
toxicological information. Some of our recent ACSI scores from the
second quarter FY2006 are:

MedlinePlus 85

MedlinePlus en español 83

NIHSeniorHealth 79

AIDS information 80

TOXNET 76

NLM Home pages 76

ACSI feedback, usability studies, and users comments have aided NLM to
change areas like web redesign, look and feel, navigation, and
functionality that resulted in higher customer satisfaction scores.

Future challenges to meet CSLIC benchmarks are to:

-   publicize the CSLIC initiatives more within the Library

-   plan and implement more regular surveys of onsite and offsite
    customer service satisfaction

-   carry out more secondary level quality assurance

-   encourage participation and gather data from other areas in the
    Library that also provide customer services

-   changing channels of communications

-   consider voice-mail options

-   balance customer services resources

-   maintain or increase customer satisfaction measures in a period of
    shrinking resources

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*At least two of CSLIC's best practices are at work at the Census
Bureau: measuring customer satisfaction and incorporating that feedback
into employee training.*

**Customers Count at the Bureau of the Census**

**By Les Solomon, Chief, Customer Services Center, Marketing Services
Office**

Probably the best, yet most risky project, was to complete an assessment
of where we are as an agency in meeting the standards established in the
CSLIC report. The spreadsheet I developed
(<http://www.usaservices.gov/cslic.htm>) lists the channels and
standards in the rows, the various call centers in the columns, then
attempts to take a stab at an assessment of our status (don\'t know,
know and don\'t meet the standard, know and meet the standard, and know
and exceed the standard). The project was risky because it is always
difficult to step on other people\'s turf, however, it has served as an
eye-opener, as well as a request for better information from the call
center if they wish to change their status. For one, it has opened the
door for discussions and support among some key decision-makers.

Additionally, I have drafted a charter for a task force to adopt the
standards, made presentations to the telecommunications folk, begun to
incorporate CSLIC standards into proposals and other memoranda to call
attention to the new guidelines, and implemented the customer services
survey as an on-going 5 percent sample for all web questions submitted
by our customers. Though we are experimenting with ways to stay in touch
with our agents on these surveys, we already view the findings each
morning to keep the agents informed (one-on-one basis), as well as to
prepare a monthly report to show how we are doing. Last month, for
instance, we saw an increase in the levels of satisfaction with our
timeliness, professionalism, and replies, as measured by the
respondents.

**\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_**

*Two of CSLIC's best practices are at work at the Government Printing
Office: having flexible hours of operation and projecting workload.*

**GPO\'s New Contact Center: Customer Focused, Mission Driven**

**By Kevin O'Toole**

Quality service to the public has always been a challenge, and few
Government agencies do it well, as documented by customer service
studies conducted by the University of Michigan\'s School of Business
and other institutions. Running a Contact Center, the central point from
which all customer contacts are managed, can be one of the hardest jobs
in any business, and is especially true for Government agencies.
Typically, a Contact Center has to serve as the face and voice of an
enterprise. To accomplish this, agent training, attendance, and
knowledge of order processing systems must be first-rate.

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General office practices normally accepted elsewhere within an
organization, such flex time or AWS, cannot always be implemented within
a Contact Center because it needs to function based on the time
schedules, needs and desires of customers, not typical office
arrangements. To accommodate these customer needs, the GPO Customer
Contact Center has extended its business hours to 7:30 a.m. to 9:00
p.m., EST, Monday through Friday.

*"General office practices normally accepted elsewhere within an
organization, such flex time or AWS, cannot always be implemented within
a Contact Center because it needs to function based on the time
schedules, needs and desires of customers*...*"*

When Bruce James assumed office as Public Printer, he immediately
recognized improved customer service as a top priority. In the past, GPO
call center operations focused around knowledge of a particular
specialty, such as taking orders for publications and subscriptions.
Today, the new Contact Center within GPO\'s Information Dissemination
area focuses around a \"universal agency\" concept, meaning all agents
are cross-trained in all areas, enabling them to address any customer
concern. Our hope is to reduce service call time, which was previously
quite high. Now we have the service expertise available immediately, and
do not have to search for someone to address the caller.

The new Contact Center, which was launched on August 2, 2004, is staffed
by a cross-section of experienced GPO employees who know how to deal
with customers. Since it began operations, the new 30-person
organization, headed by its Director, Lisa L. Williams, has handled
17,699 incoming calls and processed 1,449 emails. It has also handled
the rush of customer orders

generated by sales of the 9-11 Commission Final Report, as well as
orders generated by a successful Information Dissemination promotion of
World War II military history publications, which began with the
dedication of the new World War II Memorial on the Mall.

Information Dissemination\'s top customer relations managers are also
working closely with GPO\'s Office of Information and Technology Systems
to improve credit card processing. This has now advanced to the point
that online orders are now no longer accepted when a consumer credit
card is declined. Consumers must submit an approved credit card, which
has eliminated the collections efforts that were once necessary.

**The *Citizen Service Times* is published by the Citizen Service Levels
Interagency Committee (CSLIC), a project of the USA Services E-Gov
Initiative. USA Services' mission is "helping agencies serve
citizens."**

**Please contact Karen Trebon, CSLIC Program Manager, at 202-501-1802
or**

**<Karen.trebon@gsa.gov> if you would like to submit an article.**

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