Top 8 Best Practices for Federal Contact Centers

1. Meet all Laws, Requirements, Policies, and Directives for Federal Contact Centers

• Understand and follow all Privacy, Security, Disability, and Service Contract Act requirements.

2. Use Performance Metrics to Influence Business Rules and Drive Improvements

• Develop Key Performance Indicators/Metrics (see Performance Goals).
• CSLIC (Word document, 82 KB, 36 pages) could be used as a start.

3. Develop and Use a Comprehensive Quality Assurance Program

• Monitor quality.
• Use data to provide feedback to website/content team.
• Compare Quality Assurance scores to Customer Satisfaction scores to ensure they are similar.

4. Implement a Content Strategy

• Develop content guidelines (plain language (PDF, 186 KB, 1 page), accessibility, etc.)
• Institute a content review process (including a schedule and checklist for quality and functionality).
• Use FAQs or a knowledgebase.
• Develop pre-formatted responses (canned/scripted answers) for email, chat, social media, etc.

5. Focus on Top Tasks and Make the Most Important Content Easy to Find

• Determine top tasks.
  • Review data (reports, website traffic, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) usage, etc.)
  • Review Customer Satisfaction data
  • Survey front-line agents
• Evaluate if top tasks can be accomplished through self-service (website, IVR).
• Ensure FAQs are on your website.
• Use a knowledgebase system that automatically moves most-requested info to top.
• Arrange IVR messages in order of popularity (most-requested info is heard as first menu choice).
• Use the same language as your customers. Avoid using government acronyms, which customers may not understand. (For online FAQs, consider hidden keywords).

6. Engage Your Customers to Create a Two-Way Dialogue

• Provide blogs, communities, and outreach via other social media venues.
• Incorporate videos and webcasting.

7. Collect Customer Feedback

• Use a Customer Satisfaction Survey.
  • Don’t ask leading questions.
  • Review the Basics of Survey and Question Design
  • Allow for additional comments from customers.
  • Restrict the number of questions to seven.
  • Survey everyone; not just the happy or unhappy customers
• Conduct focus groups to gauge opinions.
• Implement usability testing to determine what is and isn’t working.
• Conduct interviews, workshops.

8. Stay Current with the Latest Research and Best Practices

• Attend training through courses, workshops, webcasts, and webinars to gain knowledge about latest information, methods, policies, and best practices.
• Review industry reports:
  • 2011 Federal Contact Center Survey Final Report (PDF, 1.49 MB, 54 pages, September 2011)
  • An Analysis of the Feasibility of Employing Home-Based Agents in Economically Depressed Rural Areas to Staff Federal Contact Centers (Word document, 115 KB, 20 pages, October 2009)
  • Removing Barriers to Citizen Engagement (Word document, 64 KB, 8 pages, March 2009)
  • Report of the Citizen Service Levels Interagency Committee (CSLIC) (Word document, 232 KB, 36 pages, 2005)