Customers frequently share their opinions of businesses online and through social media. For example, in May 2015, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and CEA issued a report entitled, ‘GSA: Managing Customer Relationships in Government.’ This report identifies a number of potential topics for the GSA to consider when it implements new regulations, and sets out the agency’s intention to engage with stakeholders in developing specific policies.

One of the objectives of the report is to explore how industry and government partners can work together to improve customer satisfaction. The report highlights the many things that businesses can do to improve the customer experience. These include engaging with customers and the media, learning about customer loyalty programs, providing transparency, communicating with customers and sharing information with employees, and implementing new technologies to provide better customer service.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is a bipartisan, independent investigative and auditing agency created by Congress. The GAO provides Congress with timely, objective, nonpartisan analyses that are free of political bias and ensure that federal agencies comply with the law. GAO is authorized under 5 U.S.C. app. 3 to conduct such investigations. To improve the overall quality of our nation’s government, the following GAO recommendations address the following topics: Review the effectiveness of the government-wide procedures implemented to prevent, detect and respond to fraudulent sales practices. Review the benefits and effectiveness of the government-wide customer satisfaction survey (CPSS) as a tool for measuring federal agency customer satisfaction. Examine the potential for improving the use of third-party customer ratings to improve government accountability. Require agencies to make available through the Government Accountability Office (GAO) information on customer satisfaction surveys, if requested. Review agency policy for maintaining, improving and increasing access to agency data on agency-specific customer satisfaction surveys.
These findings provide a basis for making recommendations on how the federal government can improve and modernize its customer satisfaction strategies to increase customer satisfaction.