Their Words, Not Ours — OIT Leading Customer Service Efforts Locally and Nationally

Knowledgeable. Tenacious. Courteous. Unfailingly helpful. Lightning fast. Exceptional.

This is how thousands of customers across the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) describe us in Office of Information and Technology (OIT). Each year, feedback is gathered from OIT’s Annual Customer Satisfaction Survey, which gauges its customers’ satisfaction with VA IT products and services, including VA’s IT infrastructure, OIT customers’ digital experience, and customer service interactions, providing OIT decision makers greater insight into what’s working well and what needs improvement. From enhanced kiosk support to deploying apps and IT services that are accessible to all Veterans, this feedback is vital to OIT’s ongoing digital transformation as a leader in the federal IT sector.

Setting New IT Standards for Customer Satisfaction

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is a measure that provides a rubric for IT customer satisfaction across the federal and private sectors. OIT’s 2022 ACSI score of 80 measured on a 0-100 scale reinforced our continued commitment to improving IT customer service, compared to the ACSI score of 79 it received in 2021.

ACSI customer satisfaction scores are also used by private companies, like Microsoft and Google, allowing cross industry comparison of results. Overall, OIT’s 2022 ACSI score of 80 outranked the combined 2022 ACSI score of 73 for 30 technology companies (The Affinity Group) that also use ACSI methodology.

These high ACSI scores don’t just happen by accident, however. The results are attributed to the strong sense of teamwork and positive internal dynamics within individual OIT teams supporting VA employees with their technology needs. Jeanine Dodson understands this all too well. Ms. Dodson is OIT’s Facility Area Manager for multiple VA facilities in the western region of South Dakota. Her team holds the esteemed honor of most improved ACSI score in the past year, with an increase of 17 points — from 62 in 2021 to 79 in 2022. Ms. Dodson attributes this success to her team’s integrated communication practices, including a daily huddle via Microsoft Teams and Friday staff meetings. “We discuss information received from Veterans Health Administration and OIT leadership, upcoming projects, issues seen by techs and resolutions, Moves, Adds, Changes, as well as any other general questions or information,” she says. “I believe this has allowed the techs to feel more in tune with what is going on both in OIT and at the facility as well as share expertise.”

That’s not to suggest that these changes haven’t come with growing pains over the past year. “We have replaced all our old desktops and laptops, network switches, core routers, and wireless access points at both facilities” says Ms. Dodson. Despite multiple projects happening simultaneously, “we have taken each project one step at a time, coordinated tours, escorting, and support as well as possible and maintained flexibility,” she says. Additionally, “we have maintained open communication, allowed staff to vent their frustrations, as well as included them [in] decision making. [We also] encourage staff to take leave and time for themselves when we are not in the middle of projects to try to avoid burnout.”

Ms. Dodson believes that these reoccurring communication touchpoints and measures to encourage work-life balance fosters OIT employees who consistently perform to their potential, which ultimately “reduce[s] the number of tickets open for extended periods of time.” These efforts also point to a much larger initiative on behalf of OIT employees supporting all VA facilities nationwide to streamline IT communication efforts and foster a culture based around diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Improved OIT Customer Support Practices

OIT’s ASCI score demonstrates the impact of actionable OIT customer support improvements in several key areas, including IT troubleshooting, information sharing, and application of best practices.  A central component to OIT’s customer satisfaction culture shift is initiatives put into practice by the Enterprise Service Desk (ESD), which serves as VA’s single point of contact for IT related issues — 24 hours a day, 365 days a year — for more than 550,000 customers.  

Over the past year, ESD has taken several actions to improve customer services based on the feedback received from VA employees through various surveys. This includes a major restructuring of the business model to ensure all contact channels (calls, chats and self-service tickets) are processed with the same speed of service across the board. Specifically, all channels are now managed by the Automated Call Distribution system, which assigns each request to the next available skilled agent on a first-in, first-out basis. The result has reduced processing time for self-service portal tickets from 24 hours to mere minutes. The results speak for themselves, with the ESD nearing their one millionth contact taken under the new business model with an outstanding 4.8 (out of 5) customer satisfaction rating on ESD caller survey. ESD also streamlined the call tree, reducing available options from eight to four, which dramatically simplified the process for customers to reach an agent. Additionally, ESD implemented estimated wait times on calls to inform customers of any delay in service, offering a callback option maintaining the same position in the queue, providing maximum choice and flexibility to customers. Similarly, agents can now see how long a customer has been waiting, which helps them tailor their responses and more quickly and empathetically resolve their issues.

Another key component of ESD’s improved customer service is Knowledge Management, which provides online self-service IT resources that empower VA employees to solve routine IT-related issues. Additionally, self-service Knowledge Articles provide logistical guidance and practical instruction on a host of IT topics. Survey results indicated a satisfaction score of 76 out of 100 for the self-service Knowledge Articles.

In 2022, the Knowledge Management team also developed more than 700 instructional videos to accompany the self-service Knowledge Articles, improved Subject Matter Experts’ response rates, hosted monthly Lunch and Learns and a Knowledge Bowl webinar to bring awareness to all of its products and services, and continued to hire and train staff by ensuring staff receive their Knowledge Management certification.

Our overwhelmingly positive customer satisfaction scores are proof of the collective benefit of OIT’s customer service improvements, which extend throughout VA facilities nationwide. Ms. Dodson agrees, saying that the additional engagement efforts with VA clinicians and OIT employees have led to greater insights into how to effectively improve system processes.

“What the supervisors’ thought was trivial was actually very important,” she says. The synergy generated by these micro and macro innovations is what allows OIT employees to consistently perform at their best, prioritize the customer’s needs, and provide industry-high satisfaction rates to VA’s employees and the Veterans they serve.