Federal government agencies’ customer experience scores hung fairly steady in Forrester Research’s US Customer Experience Index Rankings 2022 report issued last month, even as rankings for some business sectors declined.
The annual rankings measure customer experience quality across 13 industries and 221 brands. The index measures scores on a 100-point scale which looks at important customer experience quality. U.S. government agencies had an average at 62.3 out of the 100-point scale, which mirrors last years 62.6 score.
“So many industries went down, but the federal average remained flat—in most years, I would be disappointed, but this year, I’m calling stability a win,” said Forrester Vice President and Research Director Rick Parrish. “Of course, we want to see scores go up, but in a year when one in five organizations declined and most industry averages declined, stability is something.”
Among Federal government scores in the report, military healthcare provider TRICARE saw an increase of three points from last year, while scores for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) fell by six points. Regarding the IRS slump, Parrish cited tax filing delays and trust issues caused by needing to submit photographic materials as part of a new identity verification system.
Parish also explained that the rise in customer service scores for many Federal entities has been due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic that made the government invest more into customer service functions.
Parrish also expressed concern about how long government customer service and other organizations’ rankings will fare going forward.
“It isn’t expectations that are the culprit here, it’s the fact that a lot of organizations worked really hard for a year and a half into a pandemic, and they are tired, people are tired,” said Parrish. “Organizations are trying to coast on them now and they are finding they can’t.”
