Designing for equitable and trusted customer experiences

Public trust in federal institutions is near historic lows at a time when people’s expectations of our government are increasingly high and evolving rapidly. Experience with best-in-class commercial peers has set a high bar for how customers interact with government services, and the urgent needs of the COVID-19 pandemic have made the situation more acute.

For the past two years, Accenture and the Partnership for Public Service have documented government’s progress on customer experience through our “Government for the People” report and profiles of agencies’ high-impact services. Federal leaders have built a solid foundation of customer experience policy, practices and guidance—with pockets of notable excellence and innovation—in their efforts to better understand customers and build services with a customer lens.

With momentum prompted by the new administration and the changes generated by the pandemic, federal leaders should also take a hard look at what’s needed to enable lasting change. The public’s expectations and trust are fragile, shaped by experiences people have interacting with an array of services. Families applying for financial aid for college, neighbors seeking assistance after a hurricane, colleagues filing for retirement benefits, and friends going through security in an airport are the only lenses through which many people see our government in action. Positive experiences build goodwill and trust, but even a single negative interaction can have a lasting impact on people’s faith in government and democratic institutions.

This year’s report makes the case that the government should reset its relationship with the public, taking a holistic view of the services it provides and focusing on the customer journey, rather than individual touchpoints or transactions. It suggests such a focus should be equitable and inclusive of all customers, particularly those who may need services most or struggle hardest to access them. This will require agency leaders to expand their perspectives beyond the most visible symptoms of customer experience challenges to address the root causes, a critical step to generating lasting trust and real positive change.

For our research, we interviewed more than 50 leaders who oversee federal services and examined customer feedback data on high-impact services collected by agencies across service channels. In addition, we conducted an informal survey of the government community, seeking a better understanding of government’s ability to improve equity in federal services. Our work was informed by input from our quarterly customer experience roundtables as well as by leading commercial practices.

Improving the customer experience with government services has been a White House priority for a decade, reflected in successive Presidential Management Agendas and among agency leaders’ priorities. Through its first executive order, the Biden administration emphasized its intent to further harness the power of government to “advance equity to provide everyone with the opportunity to reach their full potential.” A series of administration policies have set an ambitious new bar, offering a much-needed path forward to assess and tackle equity and access challenges.

Agency leaders and employees from the executive level to the front lines of service have proven to be remarkably innovative and resilient in the face of COVID-19 over the past two years, and are poised to bring these policies to life:

• Agencies have demonstrated it is possible to shift the mindset of an entire agency to a customer-first ethos. For example, the Department of Veterans Affairs' enterprise-wide, comprehensive customer experience initiatives raised trust in the VA among veterans by 24% since 2016.
• • More than a decade of work to understand and reimagine the experience of applying for federal student loans resulted in Federal Student Aid transforming the end-to-end financial aid experience, including redesigning the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. What used to be a complex, paper-based process is now a simple one that can be completed on a smartphone. Customer satisfaction with the mobile app scored 89 out of 100.

Federal agencies have two primary opportunities to fulfill the promise of a “government for the people.” First, though the public may be satisfied with some individual services, trust in federal institutions has been at historic lows for years. Lack of public confidence in government has affected and been affected by:

• A pandemic affecting virtually every household in America—which demanded government provide services and information to every corner of the nation.
• A spotlight on systemic racism and inequality deeply intertwined with government institutions.
• Challenges to the federal electoral process and persistent threats to election integrity and voter access.

Trust and customer experience are complex. Academic literature shows much of the public does not associate many federal services with government, and indeed, indirect service providers often make it difficult for people to recognize that many services actually originate from the government. Thus, people often believe “good” service comes only from the private sector. Even when government “works,” its reputation can suffer when people believe it is not working for them. But perceptions of government performance are a key ingredient of trust. Can we better square perceptions with reality?

Today, customers on average rate their personal satisfaction with services higher than their trust in the program or agency. Though higher than measures of overall trust in government, measures of trust in programs and agencies are still the lowest-scoring element in newly published federal surveys on high-impact service providers. These surveys request customer feedback on overall satisfaction with a service, trust in that program, and five categories of “drivers” that shape experience. This disparity suggests agencies’ customer experience efforts are not capitalizing on the opportunity to improve trust. This data, though still in early days, echoes Partnership for Public Service findings in an ongoing public opinion study of trust: Although individuals may appreciate the parts of government they interact with frequently, such as the U.S. Postal Service and the Transportation Security Administration, these beliefs do not yet affect their views of the federal government overall.¹

*Weighted to account for differences in the number of customers providing feedback on each service channel. Channels with more survey respondents contribute more to the average. See methodology (in “View Full Report”) for more details.

The second major opportunity centers on improving equity in federal services. Equity is the “consistent and systematic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals,” according to the executive order on racial equity. It recognizes customers have unique interests, histories, starting points and barriers that limit access to services or increase the need for them.

We see such disparities in many federal services. Due to historic inequities, some people in Black and Hispanic communities are less likely to be vaccinated against COVID-19, and small businesses in communities of color had unequal access to federal COVID-19 relief. Inequities can result from failure to reach customers where they are. Individuals and communities may lack access to the internet, transportation to reach federal facilities or legal services to help navigate federal programs. Many federal service providers presume everyone is familiar with their jargon and tailor their offerings to longtime customers, or do not fully appreciate relevant inconsistent history of engagement with marginalized communities that has lasting effects on equity, trust and participation in government programs.

The executive order on racial equity gave a much-needed push for prioritizing equity in the context of public services. But understanding service equity is a process that will require time and determination. In July and August of 2021, the Partnership for Public Service and Accenture conducted an informal survey of government officials to gauge their views on equity in federal services (see methodology below for information on how the survey was conducted). The overwhelming majority of our respondents (80%) “agreed” or “strongly agreed” delivering services more equitably should be a top priority for their agency. However, less than a third (27%) reported having the resources needed to do so, including funding, technology and staff expertise. PolicyLink, a national research institute focused on advancing equity, found similar gaps: Its survey of federal officials found 42% felt “prepared” or “extremely prepared” to address racial equity.

Some of our respondents brought up the need to think broadly about equity and access, such as adjusting for people who are not comfortable using digital channels. For some agencies, understanding these barriers is a natural process; for others, the lens of equity is unfamiliar and, in some cases, reveals uncomfortable truths. As PolicyLink advises, understanding agencies’ roles in equity, their histories of bias and disparity, and the root causes of inequity requires serious and sustained focus—and these efforts are well aligned with customer experience principles of deeply understanding and designing for individual customer perspectives.

Such strategies should follow the following principles:

• Start with what your agency needs to know to better serve the full range of potential customers, rather than what information or customers you have easy access to.
• Reflect the needs of eligible customers, not only existing ones, and use data to assess service gaps and opportunities.
• Analyze customer insights by specific populations or mindsets, rather than generalizing about the average customer.
• Establish diverse, inclusive design teams and identify unconscious bias that may affect how research goals are defined and findings are interpreted.
• Have a well-communicated strategy for why demographic information will be collected and how it will be protected, and how it will deliver value to customers.
• Listen to customers across all points of service.
• Go where the customers are through nontraditional customer listening channels such as online forums, social media and community meetings.
• Generate partnerships with trusted stakeholders to engage underserved communities.

Approaching “listening” from this angle shifts the focus from a symptom-centric approach—how do my current customers feel about my current offerings?—to a root-cause-centric approach—what are the specific public needs from my agency, what do I need to know to meet them, how might these vary across groups or over time?

Biden administration policy and guidance strongly supports this approach. The executive order on racial equity acknowledges the institutional harm of ignoring underserved communities. And the Equitable Data Working Group is currently assessing missing, inaccessible and underused customer data.

Several agencies have found success through proactive and inclusive listening. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Agriculture used targeted outreach and trusted community partners to hear from small farmers on how the crisis was affecting them. Insights from these sessions identified gaps in how these farmers were receiving aid under the American Rescue Plan. To address disparities, USDA reconceived programs such as Pandemic Assistance for Producers, proactively engaging key stakeholders to better understand their needs and barriers to access. “That front-end engagement is really critical to improving customer experience because you get a better product,” said Zach Ducheneaux, administrator for the Farm Service Agency. The USDA has also recently announced the Equity Commission to advise USDA on addressing “barriers to inclusion or access, systemic discrimination.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has examined why specific populations were not applying for disaster assistance. “The first thing we have to do is really understand who the survivors [in a disaster] are,” a senior disaster assistance official at FEMA noted, “and who among them are applying for assistance. Without that, we’re moving blindly.” For example, individuals with disabilities have historically been underrepresented in the data FEMA collects about assistance recipients. FEMA’s targeted outreach identified several real and perceived barriers to indicating disability on applications for assistance, such as lack of clarity on what constituted a qualifying disability. Addressing those barriers enabled FEMA to better understand the needs of these populations and how agency policies affected them, and led to more targeted outreach to educate people on what benefits are available—for example, on when accessibility needs such as wheelchair ramps are not impacted by assistance caps.

Such customer-centered work is essential to resetting agency approaches, and expanding data and analytics work across agencies will help accelerate progress. The Partnership and Accenture’s informal survey on equity explored to what extent agencies collect data to understand the experience underserved populations have when they seek services from government. Though only an initial picture, the responses showed agencies have a long way to go until data and applied intelligence become effective tools for advancing equity and transforming experience.

Some 35% of respondents reported their workplaces collect “none” or only “a little” relevant data. In cases where any amount of data was collected, 36% of respondents indicated their agencies “rarely” or “never” use that kind of data to modify or redesign services to improve equity. Several respondents elaborated on their answers: one sharing that “data collection is in its infancy at the moment,” and another reporting “a severe lack of people who know how to collect and analyze this type of data.”

Individuals facing a crisis, making a significant life change or simply trying to manage a planned event like a change of address do not start with the question of “what government agency can help, and what’s the best way to reach it?” They start with their needs. Agencies can better address those needs by better integrating customer engagement with separate channels within individual services, such as applying for benefits in person, online or over the phone. They can also improve how customers work with intersecting programs they may encounter, particularly during priority life events2—both those that are planned, such as retirement, and those that are not, such as food insecurity.

During the pandemic, agencies made gains in broadening the number of channels customers can use to access services. These channels can range from in-person consultations, mobile applications and contact center phone calls to automated online chat, social media, web-based self-service and more. Multichannel or omnichannel approaches, done well, are a critical element of consistent, equitable and accessible service delivery, and OMB encourages them in its latest A-11 guidance.

Still, some agencies continue to struggle to deliver consistent and personalized services across channels, due to programmatic siloing or lack of access to digital programs and modern technology. Different channels may offer disparate levels of service or inconsistent information—for example, an online self-service application may use more formal terminology than a contact center employee who can gauge a person’s mindset during a conversation. Or they may present different capabilities, such as when application statuses can be determined only over the phone. If customers struggle to connect with agencies for services, it can lead to reduced trust in government, particularly if physical, emotional, social, psychological or economic concerns led them to seek assistance.

Integrating different agencies’ work across related programs is more complicated. As a start, OMB has collaborated with an initial set of service providers to develop cross-agency customer journey maps for three complex experiences: military service members transitioning to veteran status and seeking employment; disaster survivors seeking assistance; and transition to adulthood for individuals with intellectual disabilities. It is also committed to providing resources on designing for priority life events. Some agencies, such as the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, are already collaborating closely on facilitating customer journeys across more than one service or agency. But some of the burden for such a fundamental shift will fall on Congress due to statutory requirements in program design.

Scholars Don Moynihan and Pamela Herd define administrative burden as the “costs that people encounter when they search for information about public services (learning costs), comply with rules and requirements (compliance costs), and experience the stresses, loss of autonomy or stigma that comes from such encounters (psychological costs).” These barriers and points of friction emerge for a range of reasons—politics, bureaucracy, security—but ultimately because government services have been set up from the perspective and preferences of government.

Barriers may result from procedures aimed at public stewardship, or they may be due to the real need to prevent waste, fraud and abuse. They may result from real or perceived disparities in service experiences, such as security screening based on behavioral cues. Or they may be the result of measures that limit eligibility for government services, such as income caps or work requirements for federal benefits. Regardless, administrative burden can have a profound impact on equitable service delivery, and federal agencies are only beginning to develop methodologies for identifying, measuring and mitigating it.

Agencies may be placing administrative burden on eligible customers when they:

• Fail to recognize different customer “starting points” in accessing services.
• Require identity verification processes less accessible to specific populations, such as through credit monitoring services.
• Build in requirements demanding customers go through potentially inaccessible steps: for example, in-person appointments, ink signatures, printed photos, or original or notarized documents.
• Offer multilingual services without consideration of cultural context in translation.

Current federal policy suggests agencies take a human-centered approach to service delivery and asks that agencies regularly assess their capacity to perform at this level. Recent updates to OMB’s A-11 guidance require agencies to measure customer experience feedback, equity and burden. And the executive order on racial equity requires agencies to complete equity assessments that detail administrative burden and create an investment plan to address the barriers they find. Taken together, these policies offer a generational opportunity for remarkable progress in advancing agencies’ capacity to serve all people equitably.

But policy and intent are only the first steps. Agencies face real tradeoffs and challenges in addressing the glut of administrative burden embedded in federal programs. The administration’s study of methods to assess equity notes the work of equity is not undertaken in a few speeches or budget years but “typically involves complex, long-term change management.” Agencies should prepare themselves to invest in the long-term change management required to reduce administrative burden and increase accessibility of their services by applying the following principles:

• Design—or redesign—with, not for, the customer to identify and address policy, product and service-specific barriers and burdens.
• Recognize the historical context of government engagement with marginalized and underserved populations.
• Use evidence when evaluating administrative burden; for example, to determine if security or fraud prevention requirements are cost effective—does reducing identity verification requirements increase or decrease improper payments?
• Design for accessibility, recognizing the need for both universal access and accommodation for those who have been historically excluded.
• Minimize the requirement for customers to seek help from a third party to access services or, when required, recognize those third-party needs.
• Design business models that address outcomes tied to mission impact, not output. For example, measure the success of self-service capabilities and impact on other channels.
• Identify opportunities for proactive customer engagement, including intelligent systems that anticipate customer needs and can offer assistance or information before people seek it.

Centering service design on how customers approach needs will go a long way toward addressing root causes of administrative burden, as will understanding such barriers are often systemic, not superficial. As agencies make these shifts, they can benefit from several success stories.

Federal leaders can stand behind the groundbreaking customer experience and equity policy and guidance of the current administration, but if they do not provide resources to their agencies’ engine rooms of listening, design and delivery, they will struggle to implement that policy.

Attention to agency leadership, skills and organizational design is particularly important for the Biden administration priority on equity in service delivery. A critical point in the administration’s study on methods to assess equity is to center on the customer, but it is not simply a matter of creating a new office or adding to the staff. It is a fundamental mindset shift on several fronts, demanding strong leadership to embed that mindset into core agency functions. And, based on our informal survey of the government’s current capacity for equity, at many agencies the talent, technology and resources needed remain in short supply.

Agencies should be concerned about their organizational capacity for customer experience work if they:

• Rely on volunteers or secondary duty assignments for critical customer experience expertise.
• Launch digital solutions without understanding their accessibility or connection to customer needs.
• Approach customer experience measurement from financial or operational perspectives.
• Approach the customer experience, human-centered design or equity and accessibility as siloed or secondary functions.

To set themselves up for success, agencies should embrace the following principles:

• Invest in a dedicated workforce for human-centered design, user experience, equity, data and evaluation—whether through hiring, contracting, professional development or partnerships.
• Use annual customer experience capacity assessments (directed by A-11) to drive annual budget submissions, embracing customer experience functions as core to mission delivery.
• Make it routine to add customer experience elements into strategic planning, learning agendas, evaluation, budgeting and other agency governance processes.
• Modernize infrastructure to power customer-centric systems and leverage digital tools and intelligent technologies to enhance customer experience efforts.
• Elevate responsibility for customer experience outcomes to agency leaders and use the President's Management Council for accountability.

Several agencies have recognized the need to invest in themselves to advance the customer experience mission. At Federal Student Aid, a key factor behind recent increases in customer satisfaction has been the agency’s enhanced capability to conduct user research to inform design and product management. FSA made a point of hiring experts for a new directorate with this mission, recognizing it needed staff members with deep expertise in product design and user research who could work full time in those areas. The new directorate also formalized the processes FSA uses to build and launch new products, creating consistency and cohesion. “Having a team that is accountable for this work is very significant,” Jessica Barrett Simpson, former manager for the digital and customer care program, said, enabling FSA to ensure the agency creates products with customer needs in mind from the beginning. And improvements can be rolled out more quickly, according to FSA officials.

The Veterans Health Administration is redesigning clinical contact centers with veterans’ experiences in mind. The redesign, aimed for launch at the end of the year, will enable contact centers to transfer some medical questions to providers, while contact center staff members address basic administrative, scheduling and pharmacy questions. This move brings veterans closer to their medical care objective in a single call. Medical providers can help triage these customers’ needs, addressing urgent issues over the phone and saving trips to the emergency room. This is a good example of VA’s model for designing “easy, effective and emotionally resonant experiences that build trust,” Jennifer Purdy, executive director for patient experience, said. To help achieve this, the VHA is transitioning the clinical contact centers away from a facility-based model toward a consortium model that brings together several contact center teams. This will help enable the department to manage demand across the VA more effectively.

This report and associated agency profiles examine customers’ experiences with 15 federal services that are among those with the highest volume of direct contact with the public. Read the profiles below on the Partnership for Public Service’s website:

• Transportation Security Administration: Airport security screening and passenger support services
• U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: Citizenship and immigration applicant services
• Customs and Border Protection: Customs security and screening services
• Department of Agriculture: Farm loan and conservation services
• Office of Federal Student Aid, Department of Education: Federal student aid services
• Internal Revenue Service: Individual taxpayer services
• Federal Emergency Management Agency: Disaster relief programs
• Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services: Medicare customer support service
• Office of Personnel Management: Retirement services for federal employees
• Bureau of Consular Affairs, State Department: Passport services
• Recreation.gov: Recreation reservations for federal lands
• Social Security Administration: Social Security retirement services
• Veterans Benefit Administration: Veterans education and training benefits
• Veterans Health Administration: Veterans outpatient healthcare services
• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: Trademark registration and maintenance

¹ Average percentage of respondents rating services four or five on a five-point Likert scale. Averages are for 21 service channels across 10 federal services. Customer experience drivers from OMB A-11 guidance. See methodology for more details.
² OMB defines “priority life events” as events that require members of the public to navigate a service (or services) across the boundaries of multiple Federal programs, agencies and/or levels of government.
³ As defined by A-11 guidance, these are events that require members of the public to navigate a service (or services) across the boundaries of multiple federal programs, agencies and/or levels of government. Examples might be retirement or food insecurity.
⁴ Average percentage of respondents rating services four or five on a five-point Likert scale. Web averages are for 10 service channels across seven federal services; phone/in-person averages are for eight service channels across six federal services. Customer experience drivers are from OMB A-11 guidance. See methodology for more details.