Satisfaction with Federal government agencies is at an all-time high, but the average customer experience (CX) rating across government still sits below the private sector, and digital experiences are seen as a weak point, according to Forrester’s Federal Customer Experience Index for 2020.

The index – which surveyed over 11,000 people on their experiences with 15 Federal agencies or programs and scored them on a 100-point scale – found that five agencies made significant improvements, and that almost all agencies are currently sitting at their all-time high score. Agencies like the National Park Service and the Bureau of Consular Affairs saw gains that brought them to the top of the 15 agencies scored.

However, the report notes that this improvement is coming from a low baseline. Across government, the average CX score is a 61.1 out of 100.

“Unfortunately, the federal government’s CX remains weak and uneven compared with the private sector’s,” the report states. “The federal average is 10.7 points behind the private sector average and lower than any other industry or sector we studied.”

A concern raised by the report’s authors is the low scores for Federal websites and apps, which bring down the overall scores for government. The lowest scoring programs across government were HealthCare.gov and USAJOBS.gov, which were both evaluated by Forrester as being in the “very low” category of CX.

“Only 49% of digital-only federal customers were able to accomplish their goals for interacting with an agency – down 3 percentage points from 2019. In contrast, 61% of federal customers who used physical channels and 57% who used both types of channels were able to accomplish their goals,” the report states.

Forrester also mapped these lower CX scores to reduced trust in agencies, less willingness to follow rules, and less desire to use optional services.

“A mere 45% of federal customers said that they had a positive experience obtaining benefits or information … the percentage of customers who consider federal services easy to use is about the same as the 47% of airline customers who enjoy the inflight experience,” the report’s authors write.

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