The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) reported today that customer satisfaction across Federal agencies was down in 2018 to a score of 68.9, following two years of improved satisfaction, as part of the ACSI Federal Government Report for 2018. The decline of 1.1 percent is a relatively small number, but the results of the index were collected before the partial government shutdown that recently ended after 35 days.
The ACSI Federal government model has four drivers of customer satisfaction including: usefulness of government websites, the quality of information, timeliness and ease of government processes, and customer service. Each of those individual drivers is down from 2017. The report notes that satisfaction can vary across departments because some departments offer services that are sought out by citizens, whereas others—such as regulatory services—would rather not be dealt with by citizens.
The Departments of Defense and Interior had the highest ACSI scores of 78 on a scale of 1-100. The Department of Housing and Urban Development had the lowest score of 57. The national average for all 380+ public and private sector companies measured by ACSI is 77, as of Q3 2018, and the Federal government-wide score is 68.9.
The ACSI for 2018 is based off the interviews of 2,779 users chosen at random. The data is “used as inputs to ACSI’s cause-and-effect econometric model, which estimates citizen satisfaction as the result of the survey-measured inputs of expectations, and perceptions of the quality of government services.”
