The Federal Consulting Group (FCG) has partnered with CFI Group to help government agencies measure citizen satisfaction so they can continually strive to improve the quality of their services. CFI Group has over twenty-five years of industry experience and is a founding partner of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), the gold-standard methodology used to measure the customer experience, identify key satisfaction drivers, benchmark performance, interpret results, and recommend key areas for service improvement.

CFI Group/FCG-Affiliated Agencies Achieve Higher ACSI Ratings

Since 2011, the average ACSI score for agencies working with CFI Group and FCG has continued to trend well above the Federal Government average. Of the 40 different agencies or departments partnering with CFI Group and FCG, 32 agencies (75%) achieved a higher ACSI score than the average Federal Government score in 2014. As illustrated in the figure to the right, the ACSI score gap between the two groups has actually widened year-over-year since 2011. Last year, that ACSI margin exceeded 10 points, with CFI/FCG-affiliated agencies scoring 74.7 and the overall Federal Government scoring just 64.4.

While the directional trends of the two data sets above mirror each other in terms of showing a slight downward pattern in customer satisfaction since 2012, the decline was more pronounced for agencies which did not utilize the services of FCG and CFI Group. From 2013 to 2014, the overall Federal Government average saw a marked 2.6% decline, with its ACSI score dropping from 66.1 to 64.4. During that same time, the collection of agencies working with CFI/FCG experienced a far more muted average decline of 1.2%, shifting just slightly lower from 75.6 to 74.7.

The Best Performing Agencies Partnering with CFI/FCG

Several different types of federal government agencies and departments work with CFI Group and FCG to measure and improve their citizen experience. These include financial service providers, regulatory services, information providers, and call centers. In general, call centers and information providers consistently earn the highest levels of overall customer satisfaction. This group collectively earned average ACSI scores of 82.4 and 80.8 respectively from 2013 to 2014.

Among individual call centers, the National Recreation Reservation Service was the highest performer with an ACSI rating of 90 in 2014, a dramatic increase from its initial score of 75 in 2009. This impressive 15-point jump in just five years highlights the potential advantage of working with CFI Group and FCG to evaluate, benchmark, and improve customer satisfaction levels in the Federal Government.