FREEDyourMind

The Inaugural ForeSee Results E-Government Transparency Index

Today we released our inaugural E-Government Transparency Index. You can download the report for free on our website and read about it on NextGov. I'll share the results first and then explain a bit of the background. These are all Transparency scores, calculated on a 100-point scale. We're starting with 14 federal government websites, so this is far from representative of the whole government, and there are certainly sites out there with slightly higher and much lower transparency. But this study does represent more than 30,000 citizen surveys, which is nothing to sneeze at.

In the Next Gov article, GSA's Dave McClure said, "We have always assumed that greater transparency [and] more openness in government would link to greater satisfaction and higher trust in government. What this study does is help confirm that."

 

 Lots more details in the full report, which you can download for free on our website.

Now, a little more background on what we're measuring and why.

When President Obama released his memo last February about transparency and open government, we immediately got to work. We were already measuring online customer satisfaction with more than 200 federal websites, and our researchers thought there might be a way to adapt our methodology to measure the President's transparency goals in an accurate, precise, actionable manner. If we could do it, it would give agencies a way to measure their performance on these objectives. After all, as I have been known to say maybe once or twice in my career (or in the last 5 minutes), you can't manage what you don't measure. Agencies cannot manage, maintain, or improve transparency, communication, collaboration, or trust without a quantifiable measure of these objectives.

For months, we worked on models and tested them. We were already measuring dozens of drivers, or elements of satisfaction (such as navigation, search, content, look and feel, etc), and we had a theory that online transparency was another one. Citizens who perceive a website as more transparent are going to be more satisfied. Satisfaction as measured by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) has been sown again and again to predict certain future behaviors such as likelihood to use the website as a primary channel instead of other, more costly channels; likelihood to recommend, likelihood to return to the website, etc. So we wanted to see if it was also true that satisfaction predicted likelihood to communicate and collaborate with a given agency, and we wanted to see if satisfaction predicted trust in the agency. These were all the key elements laid out in the Obama memo.

After three months of testing the models, we implemented the new methodology on e-gov sites that volunteered to be part of our research, and then we tested some more. We tweaked, we adjusted, and in July, we published our first report, showing conclusively that transparency was a key driver of satisfaction (in fact, for most agencies but not all, it was the most important driver of satisfaction) and that satisfaction, in turn, predicted trust).

Meanwhile, the buzz about our research grew, and agencies were signing up left and right to deploy the new model on their site. The new model measured all the old things that agencies have been measuring online with us for 10 years, it just added these new elements so that agencies could evaluate their success on these open government initiatives and report their success if they choose.

The E-Government Transparency Index

We decided to publish a report with scores for the 14 sites that had enough data collected by the end of December. We have high standards for data collection, so while many more sites are measuring transparency, only 14 had a big enough sample by the end of the year. Voila, The E-Gov Tranparency Index. Kudos to all that let us publish their scores, and we are looking forward to seeing the Index grow and expand in the coming year.

Just in time!

Last December, the White House and OMB released another memo setting an aggressive time line for agencies to be more open and solicit public opinions. Those of you who have the new model implemented on your site should be well on your way to quantifying how transparent your website is with ACSI-modeled scores for trust and transparency, which are benchmarkable across agencies. Those of you who don't have the new model implemented, just contact your SRA and they can fix you up. Those of you who are not currently running the ACSI survey online can contact dave.lewan@foreseeresults.com and we'll help you out.

So what do you think? Any surprises? Who would you like to see included in the Transparency Index next time?

American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) Q4 Results Released Today

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) Q4 results were released today.  The ACSI was founded at The University of Michigan in 1994 and is the leading measurement of Customer Satisfaction in the world.  And while others may make up acronyms and new gimmicks to try to measure consumer satisfaction, the ACSI is the only measurement that has the financial evidence behind it that proves its accuracy, reliability and precision.  And the only methodology that stands up to peer review and has the respect of Economists and Researchers around the world.

Fourth Quarter ACSI Results:  The fourth quarter results cover some very important sectors: Retail, Finance and E-Commerce.  Overall, the ACSI dipped by 0.1% to a 75.9, just 0.2 off its all time high and 0.2 above the Q4 2008 results.  Very impressive results considering the still difficult economy.  These results do not hurt the economic outlook and give us confidence that the economic recovery has a very good chance of continuing on its current pace. 

E-Commerce Key Findings (for the full report check out www.ForeSeeResults.com )

• Satisfaction with e-commerce is up nearly 2% since last year to 81.4.
• The increase in the overall e-commerce sector score is clearly driven by the rebounding online brokerage industry, up 5.4% to 78, with Fidelity and Charles Schwab sharing the top spot with a score of 79.
• The e-retail industry, always the strongest within the e-commerce sector, gains one point to a score of 82 and Netflix takes the top spot.
• The online travel industry ties its all time high aggregate score of 77, not seen since 2005.  Expedia holds the top spot.

Retail Sector: Customer Satisfaction with the retail sector, which includes department and discount stores, specialty retail stores, supermarkets, health and personal care stores and gas stations rose 1.3% to a score of 76.2.  Department and discount stores climbed 1.4% to an ACSI score of 75.  Some notable results include Target up 4% to a score of 80.  Specialty retailers rose 1.3% to a score of 77, with Barnes & Noble leading the way with a score of 84. Supermarkets remained unchanged with Publix continuing to lead the way with score of 86, up 5%.

Finance & Insurance:  This sector improved 1.4% to a score of 77.1, with Banks coming in with a score of 75 and Credit Unions registering 84.  Life Insurance rose 1.3% to 79, Health Insurance went up 2.7% to 75 and Property & Casualty Insurance dropped 1.2% to a score of 80.

You can find out more about the American Customer Satisfaction Index at www.ForeSeeResults.com and TheACSI.org

Summary

So, why is Customer Satisfaction important?  Well, as a leading economic index, the ACSI is unmatched.  And for individual companies an accurate measurement of customer satisfaction can give you the intelligence you need to make the right decisions to optimize your investments.  Consumers go where they are satisfied, so to win in the ultra competitive environment we live in today, companies must satisfy their customers or they face the risk of not surviving.

Social Media Strategy for Retailers

Get a Facebook page!

Okay, so that's not so much a strategy, really more of a tactic. But research we released today clearly shows the value of a Facebook page to retailers. Among our key findings:

• Facebook is, by far, the best place to reach shoppers—both because it’s where they already are, and it’s where they want to hear from retailers.
• 56% of shoppers to top e-retail websites who interact with social media websites have elected to "friend" or "follow" or "subscribe" to a retailer on a social networking site like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube
• Customers mainly interact with retailers on social media sites to learn about products and promotions (rather than for help or technical support)—a marketer’s dream come true.
• Half of the top 100 retailers have a lackluster or nonexistent social media presence. If you can't find a retailer's Facebook page by going to Facebook and searching for their name, or if they are a top 100 retailer and have fewer than 10,000 fans... they aren't maximizing the value of this marketing opportunity.

Your customers want to interact with you! Make sure you're giving them what they want and that they can find you. And make sure you understand the needs of YOUR customers rather than industry trends (you know, like the one we're reporting in this research), because we see huge differences in preference and satisfaction from one retailer to the next.