Archive
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Document Name: The General Public (5 of 23)
Date: 09/01/94
Owner: National Performance Review
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Title: Standards for Our Customers: The General Public (5 of 23)
Author: Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review
Date: September, 1994
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CUSTOMER GROUP: The General Public
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Bureaucracy. Red tape. Rigmarole. The runaround. Paperwork.
Administrivia. There are a lot of names for the cumbersome way
government does business, a way that seems designed to drive people
crazy. How many times have you needed a simple piece of information
on a government product or service and not known who to call, where
to begin? If interacting with the federal government leaves you
muttering to yourself, you're not alone: 80 percent of Americans
don't trust the federal government to do the right thing most of the
time.
A lot of people in Los Angeles, California, are part of the other 20
percent. On January 17, 1994, an earthquake that measured 6.7 on the
Richter Scale rocked Northridge and the rest of the Los Angeles area.
Total damage was calculated in billions of dollars. The devastation
of the quake closed the Santa Monica Freeway, L.A.'s busiest.
Thousands of families were forced out of their homes.
When President Clinton declared the earthquake a federal emergency,
the people of Los Angeles became customers of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency. Working together with the Department of
Transportation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the
Federal Highway Administration, and state and local officials, FEMA
responded not with hoops to jump through but with aid.
A central processing office was set up at Redwood City to process
applications for assistance. When the office opened on January 22,
the paper flooded in. Chal Overdorff and his staff dealt with it.
With the help of new technology to estimate damage and determine
payments, and by working around the clock, Overdorff and his staff
have cut almost 400,000 checks -- the most in the history of FEMA for
a single disaster.
Much of FEMA's work couldn't be done in an office. Outreach leader
Tim Richardson and his partner discovered an 80-year-old woman still
living in her mobile home, even though it had been shaken off its
blocks and was teetering on its hitch. She was frightened by
aftershocks and was out of water. Richardson's team helped get her to
safety, registered her for assistance, got her in touch with crisis
counselors, and found a contractor to repair her home. She's back in
her house now and doing fine.
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FEMA's work produced thousands of thank-you's like this one:
The earthquake on January 17, 1994, shook everyone in the city badly.
Emotionally, I was in very bad shape for about two weeks. It took my
family and myself about three months to get our home back into pre-
quake condition although we have lost many irreplaceable items. I
still suffer from occasional nightmares. FEMA, the SBA, everyone we
dealt with from the government was extremely helpful, understanding,
and I have never seen bureaucracy move this fast and this
efficiently. Thank you very much for all your help.
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This is quite a comeback from the shots that FEMA took after
hurricane Andrew in 1992. The agency is publishing standards that try
to build on its success in Los Angeles.
No Bigger Job
*************
Think about the job of the U.S. Postal Service: collect, sort, and
cancel 177 billion pieces of mail each year. Deliver to over 122
million homes, stores, post office boxes, and businesses every day.
Operate 40,000 post offices across the country. It's hard to think of
an organization that has more contact with the public.
In last September's report of the National Performance Review, the
Postal Service presented standards based on its customers' input
about what is important. It set standards of overnight delivery of
local First Class Mail and three-day delivery of cross-country mail.
It committed to a program to cut the wait in offices to "five minutes
or less." It also pledged to provide a postal information phone
system, operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
So how are things going? To date 81 cities have the 24-hour
information phone service. Three-quarters of the 40,000 post offices
across the country now offer counter service in five minutes or less.
And on-time delivery is at 82 percent across the country and exceeds
90 percent in some cities -- Des Moines, Long Beach, Spokane, and
others.
But the Postal Service reported that in tests in the Washington area
this spring and summer, only 50 to 60 percent of deliveries were on
time. Similar problems surfaced in Chicago and Tennessee. Worse,
postal inspectors acting on Postmaster General Runyon's orders to
check things out found millions of pieces of delayed mail at two
Washington, D.C., post offices. The Postal Service clearly wasn't
meeting its standards in these places.
The leaders took action. They brought in proven managers and added
employees on the street and in the front line. Hundreds of people
worked overtime to reduce the backlog. At the top, the Postal Service
has a new chief operating officer -- Bill Henderson, who had met
customer service standards in his job as Division Manager for North
Carolina.
Is the problem fixed? No; clearly there's more to do. Service has
improved, but not to the level that the Postal Service wants. So
what's the lesson? Did the Postal Service make a mistake setting
standards in the first place? Absolutely not.
In the old days, before standards and performance measurements, the
Postal Service might not have even known where to look for problems.
If it heard complaints, the brouhaha would likely have resulted in
more rules for workers to follow. Now it has regular measurement of
both customer satisfaction and on-time delivery by Opinion Research
and Price Waterhouse. Today it knows where to look for problems and
is working to solve them. This is exactly the point of setting
standards -- to get agencies to focus on what their customers want
and take action when they come up short.
For the future, the Postal Service has reaffirmed its commitment to
the standards in last year's report of the National Performance
Review.
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Highlights from Customer Service Standards:
U.S. Postal Service
--- Your First Class Mail will be delivered anywhere in the United
States within three days.
--- Your local First Class Mail will be delivered overnight.
--- You will receive service at post office counters within five
minutes.
--- You can get postal information 24 hours a day by calling a local
number.
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Good Afternoon -- Here's Your Stuffed Fish and Telephone Bill
*************************************************************
The August 31, 1994, Washington Post reported on a test of the mail
delivery system that the National Enquirer had carried out -- and on
the subsequent reaction of Postmaster General Marvin Runyon:
To test the mail system, the tabloid newspaper put addresses on a
coconut, false teeth, boxer shorts, a rubber snake, a soda can and a
stuffed fish. All were delivered, Runyon said. "It was a crazy test,
one we don't recommend others replicate," he said. "But I do agree
with the Enquirer's verdict: The Postal Service really delivers."
Protecting the Public
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Much of the government has as its job protecting the public -- its
seat belts, its food, its children's toys, its drinking water -- the
list goes on. Many agencies whose role is protecting the general
public have already signed up to improve customer service.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has many programs
with a single life-saving aim: to give us all a better chance to get
where we need to go safely. To make safety information widely
available, the agency operates an Auto Safety Hotline, a toll-free
telephone service. Hotline callers get information on motor vehicle
recalls and safety defect investigations. Hotline operators are
trained to answer vehicle and traffic safety questions. They take
consumer complaints about possible safety defects and assist callers
who are having difficulty obtaining repair work for existing recalls.
Callers can also request safety literature. The service is available
to the hearing impaired through teleprinter (TDD) connections.
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Highlights from Customer Service Standards:
National Highway Traffic safety administration
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
--- Your calls are important and will be answered promptly. If you
have trouble reaching one of our operators, call after 6 p.m. and
leave a message on the answering machine. We will call you back the
next business day. You will not be put on hold for longer than two
minutes.
--- You will be given the most complete and accurate information
possible.
--- By December 1994, NHTSA will use its fax-on-demand service to
provide you with fact sheets and information within 24 hours.
Consumer Product safety commission
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Call the CPSC Hotline at 1-800-638-2772 to report an unsafe product,
report a product-related injury, receive information on product
recalls and repairs/replacements, and learn what to look for in
purchases. Customer service standards are:
--- Answer your call 7 days a week/24 hours a day.
--- Provide easy-to-follow instructions in English or Spanish, or in
another language during working hours.
--- Take information quickly, accurately, and courteously.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
OSHA receives many complaints from employees about unsafe working
conditions and has established these customer service standards for
employees:
--- OSHA currently schedules inspections, on average, within 18 days
of an employee's complaint of a serious hazard and 26 days of an
other than serious hazard. . . . We will reduce the average time.
--- OSHA will ensure that employees have the opportunity to
participate in inspections.
--- We will complete investigations for those employees who believe
they are being discriminated against for exercising their rights to
request or participate in investigations within 90 days.
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The Consumer Product Safety Commission's mission is also to protect
the public -- against unreasonable risk of injury from consumer
products. Commission Chair Ann Brown has stepped up media efforts to
get the word out quickly about dangerous products. She appears
regularly on shows like "Good Morning America" to announce product
recalls and inform the public. The commission also operates a hotline
as a service to its customers and is setting standards for the
hotline.
If you aren't sure what to do with frozen food when your power fails,
you can get help from the Food Safety and Inspection Service's toll-
free hotline (1-800-535-4555). This 24-hour hotline is part of the
service's commitment to open communications and develop more
productive working relation-ships with the public, industry,
academia, state and local governments, and the media. The service
also inspects over 6,000 meat and poultry plants to ensure that their
products are safe, wholesome, and accurately labeled.
The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is to protect the
environment today and for future generations. EPA is reinventing
itself to communicate better with customers and get customer inputs
to EPA decisions. As EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner says, "An
informed and involved local community will make better environmental
decisions than a distant bureaucracy." EPA is publishing standards
that include responding to letters within five working days, and it
has set up a hotline (1-800-535-0202) to respond to questions about
waste management, underground storage tanks, chemical accident
prevention, and Superfund sites.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration takes care of its
job -- protecting the health and safety of American workers --
through partnerships with employees, employers, and state and local
governments. OSHA's customers number more than 100 million workers
and over 6 million employers. In OSHA's customer surveys, workers
expressed a need for better hazard information and training.
Employers asked for better information on what they had to do to
comply with OSHA requirements. OSHA has developed aggressive programs
to get more information out, involve workers more in the inspection
process, and assist employers.
Talking to Your Government
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You call a toll-free number and you get the help you need. That's not
too much to expect in 1994. You get it from American Express. You get
it from American Airlines. You should get no less from American
government.
The Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, and
other federal agencies are finding out that Americans increasingly
let their fingers do the walking. As a result, these agencies are
studying how corporate America serves its customers over the phone.
Agencies are learning the most efficient ways to deal with surges in
calling, like when Social Security checks go out each month or when
April 15 rolls around. Top businesses also have a lot to teach about
giving the people who answer the phones quick access to information
and the authority to make decisions so that they can solve customers'
problems and really be of service. Reinventing government means
equaling the best in business; phone service is no exception.
WE PROMISE . . .
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Dear President Clinton:
We are establishing standards for telephone service that include
promptness, courtesy, and accuracy. With industry leaders as a model,
we are making progress. But we still have much to do. We believe we
can give the American people the telephone service they deserve. We
promise to work hard to achieve this goal and report progress to you
in September 1995.
Hon. Shirley Chater, Comissioner, Social Security Administration
Hon. Roger Johnson, Administrator, General Services Administration
Hon. James B. King, Director, Office of Personnel Management
Hon. Margaret M. Richardson, Commissioner, Internal Revenue Service
Hon. Doris Meissner, Commissioner, Immigration and Naturalization
Service
Hon. Mary A. Ryan, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Consular Affairs,
Department of State
Dr. Harry A. Scarr, Acting Director, Bureau of the Census
Paying Taxes
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Most people would just as soon not be customers of the Internal
Revenue Service. Like it or not, we need the IRS to collect revenue.
The good news is that the IRS believes it can do a better job
collecting taxes by viewing us all as customers. The idea is that
better customer service will increase voluntary compliance.
Thinking of us all as customers is changing things at the IRS. For
over a decade, the IRS put top priority on getting tax booklets to us
right after January 1. But a customer survey showed that minimizing
contact with the IRS was the true priority of taxpayers. Taking this
input to heart, the IRS is finding ways to cut down on contact.
One project is developing a system that gives citizens one tax
interface with all levels of government. The Social Security
Administration and the IRS are working together so businesses and
individuals need to supply wage data only once for all tax collection
agencies -- federal, state, and local. Twelve states will participate
in the program this year and 11 more in 1995.
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Highlights from Customer Service Standards:
Internal Revenue Service
These are samples of the customer service standards from the IRS.
Expect to see these and other standards in your tax booklets for 1994
taxes.
--- If you file a complete and accurate tax return and you are due a
refund, your refund will be issued within 40 days if you file a paper
return or within 21 days if you file electronically.
--- Our goal is to resolve your account inquiries with one contact.
To reach that goal, we will make improvements yearly.
--- If you have a problem that has not been resolved through normal
processes, you may contact our Problem Resolution Office. A
caseworker will contact you within one week and will work with you to
resolve the problem.
--- If you provide sufficient and accurate information to our tax
assistors but are given and reasonably rely on an incorrect answer,
we will cancel related penalties.
--- We will make tax forms and instructions easier and simpler for
you to use. We made some good changes this year, but we want your
ideas for future improvements. Please call us at 1-800-829-3676 --
available nine hours each business day -- or you can write us at
Internal Revenue Service, Attention: Tax Forms Committee, PC:FP,
Washington, D.C. 20224.
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Paying taxes can never be painless, but it can be less painful. In
some states, taxpayers will be able to file by phone this year
through a program called Telefile. Residents of Florida, Indiana,
Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, and West Virginia that are
filing a 1040 EZ and have a touch-tone phone will have the Telefile
option for 1994 taxes. Service through Telefile is available 24 hours
a day, seven days a week. With Telefile, filing your tax return may
end up as easy as calling Domino's.
Buying Money
************
Unlike the Internal Revenue Service, everyone would like to be a
customer of the U.S. Mint -- a repeat customer, in fact. And,
directly or indirectly, almost every American is already a U.S. Mint
customer. The mint produces the nation's supply of coins for trade
and commerce, plus special issues and investment coins. In addition,
the mint sees 600,000 tourists a year at its Philadelphia and Denver
sites and has a customer mailing list of 2 million coin collectors.
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Highlights from Customer Service Standards:
U.S. Mint
--- Your orders will be shipped within four weeks of receipt.
--- Your inquiries will be answered with one-stop service.
--- Your calls will be returned within one working day.
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You may cancel your order anytime prior to shipment.
****************************************************
The mint has taken customer service principles to heart. First, it is
listening to its front-line employees' ideas on how to improve
service. As a result of an employee suggestion, mint employees now
call coin collectors and other customers directly if an expiration
date is missing from a credit card order. In the past, such an order
would have been rejected and returned to the customer for correction,
causing further delay.
The mint is also one of a few government agencies that have customer
service reps. At the mint, the reps alert customers of sellouts and
take credit card orders by phone. In addition, the mint is examining
the best in business -- companies such as Black & Decker, T. Rowe
Price, Lenox China and Crystal, the Royal Mint of Great Britain, and
Vanguard Mutual Funds -- for ideas that it can apply to its own
operations.
Helping Americans Invest
************************
Peter Lynch may be telling you to "beat the street," but the
Securities and Exchange Commission wants to make sure you have a
level playing field. The SEC protects investors by enforcing federal
securities laws and regulating securities markets. Individual and
institutional investors have trillions invested in securities and
mutual funds in the United States and abroad. While the SEC does not
approve or guarantee any investments, it does make sure that
securities issuers fully disclose material information to investors
and markets adhere to fair standards.
As part of its commitment to service, the Securities and Exchange
Commission is conducting customer surveys throughout the country
covering a wide range of topics; the results have proven surprising
in some cases. Misconceptions about mutual funds purchased through
banks are especially worrisome. Most mutual funds sold through banks
are not federally insured, yet 28 percent of the respondents to a
recent SEC survey thought they were. Similarly, money market mutual
funds bought through a bank are not federally insured, yet 66 percent
of the survey's respondents who have bought these funds through banks
thought otherwise. Since many people don't understand these risks,
the SEC is mounting a campaign to get the word out. A new series of
educational brochures titled Invest Wisely are part of this. One
brochure will focus on mutual funds, covering investment basics and
warning of pitfalls. The SEC is also using focus groups to find out
more about what its customers value.