Happy New Year! At USDA, we are more committed than ever to providing employees and customers with the best experience possible in 2024.
To do so, we are building on the foundation we set since President Biden signed the Customer Experience Executive Order in December 2021. At the heart of our foundation for addressing the problems people face when trying to access services and benefits, is a human-centered design framework.
Guiding us along the way these past two years is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Customer Experience Policy (PDF, 253 KB), which outlines USDA's CX policies, requirements, and responsibilities. Through this policy, the Office of Customer Experience (OCX) is permanently authorized to foster cross-departmental collaboration aimed at addressing complex challenges across programs and services that impact both customer and employee experiences.
Additionally, OCX completed benchmark CX maturity assessments for mission areas, agencies and staff offices, which included interviews, surveys, and questionnaires. We also developed and submitted the first-ever USDA-wide CX Action Plan which identifies priorities for improving designated services, building USDA’s CX management capacity and continuing to improve service delivery through digital modernization efforts.
Through listening to customers and implementing humanistic solutions to reduce barriers and burdens of access, USDA met its Agency Priority Goal (APG) to enhance CX and improve trust. This is a continuous process. And to date, we have designed, developed, and launched more than 10 customer surveys to measure trust and satisfaction and collect insights to inform activities with the goal of making meaningful CX improvements.
Having mobilized teams to address the CX Executive Order requirements, the Department has achieved tangible results including the simplification of loan processes and enabling online access to benefits. To increase access to helpful resources for underserved producers and our partner organizations who serve them, we launched the CARES Partner Portal. CARES stands for Create, Assist, Rebuild, Empower and Strengthen, which is our model for strengthening our communities and customer relationships.
In the coming weeks we will feature our CX accomplishments and efforts in this limited weekly series on USDA Blog. In case you missed it, check out our first post: Two-Year Anniversary of Customer Experience Executive Order: USDA Celebrates Customer Experience Efforts | USDA.
Updates will also be posted on the Office of Customer Experience (OCX) website and reported publicly on Performance.gov. To follow CX stories and posts across agencies, follow #govdelivers on social media.