When it comes to improving customer experience (CX), leveraging website analytics is top of mind for Joe Carter, the director of CX at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Carter explained that collecting website feedback “is a great starting point” for Federal agencies looking to improve customer experience and satisfaction.
“It starts with customer feedback – measuring customer satisfaction and measuring trust,” Carter said during a Federal News Network event on April 23. “I think sometimes Federal agencies … don’t want to ask because maybe you don’t really want to know because it may not be what you wanted to hear. But it’s critically important to collect feedback so that, even if it’s negative, you have a starting point to improve upon.”
Specifically, Carter said Federal agencies should look at what search terms their customers are entering when they go to Google, Bing, or other search engines.
“What are the search results showing up on your sites? Is the content you want them to find, is it the top of those results? Is there duplicative content? Is it easy to navigate those digital websites that you have? So, to me, there’s a lot of data that you kind of have to wrap your hands around, and I think you just start with bite-sized chunks,” he said.
For example, he said HUD started by looking at website feedback and it is now looking at customer relationship management (CRM) in the “longer-term.”
Additionally, Carter said that HUD “co-designed” its website with its public customers and intermediary customers such as state and local governments. HUD co-designed the webpages, prototypes, and then user testing so that customers were “a part of the entire process,” he said, “so that the end result is a website that truly does reflect their needs and their preferences.”
In HUD’s case, he said that often means redirecting customers to what they’re looking for. For example, for customers with an immediate urgent need, HUD frequently redirects them to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
“Knowing exactly what your customers’ needs are and their pain points at the beginning can help you design and develop a solution that ensures that you’ve fulfilled them and that they’re more satisfied and that they’ve increased their trust that the Federal government actually listens to them,” Carter said.
“I’m extremely grateful to the work that the Office of Management and Budget has been doing, requiring Federal agencies to implement the digital analytics program so that all Federal websites have Google Analytics in place so that we can have a view into, again, what are the top pages that they’re coming to, what are they looking for from us? What are they searching so that we can learn from that data to take action? So to me, it’s not about metrics, per se, the metrics are important … but it’s more about what can you learn from the data so that you can improve,” he concluded.
