April 1996

The Policy Perspective On: Customer Service Standards

• Statute
• Executive Order
• Governmentwide Regulation
• OPM Policy
• Agency Policy

Statute. Although there is no specific statute addressing setting customer service standards, Section 4302 of title 5, United States Code, includes broad language stating that each agency's performance appraisal system shall provide for "...the accurate evaluation of job performance on the basis of objective criteria (which may include the extent of courtesy demonstrated to the public...)."

Executive Order. E.O. 12862, "Setting Customer Service Standards," was signed by President Clinton on September 11, 1993. The Order requires that all Executive departments and agencies that provide significant services directly to the public take the following actions:

1. identify customers who are, or should be, served by the agency;
   
2. survey customers to determine the kind and quality of services they want and their level of satisfaction with existing services;
   
3. post service standards and measure results against them;
   
4. benchmark customer service performance against the best in business;
   
5. survey frontline employees on barriers to, and ideas for, matching the best in business;
   
6. provide customers with choices in both the sources of service and means of delivery;
   
7. make information, services, and complaint systems easily accessible; and
   
8. provide means to address customer complaints.

Governmentwide Regulation. Even though there is no Governmentwide regulation that requires the establishment of customer service standards, per se, 5 CFR 430.201(b) defines the purpose of performance appraisal systems as a tool for executing basic management and supervisory responsibilities by communicating and clarifying agency goals and objectives; identifying individual accountability for the accomplishment of organizational goals and objectives; and by evaluating and improving individual and organizational accomplishments, among other things. Clearly, the regulations encourage agencies to align their appraisal programs with their organizational goals, which include their customer service goals and standards.

The National Performance Review (NPR) report, From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government that Works Better and Costs Less, proposed four specific steps to empower customers:

1. require that all Federal agencies put customers first;
   
2. make agencies compete for their customers' business;
   
3. turn Government monopolies into more businesslike enterprises where competition is not feasible; and
   
4. shift some Federal functions from old-style bureaucracies to market mechanisms.

Vice President Al Gore made the following statement at a Town Meeting on March 26, 1993: "We are going to rationalize the way the Federal Government relates to the American people, and we are going to make the Federal Government customer friendly. A lot of people don't realize that the Federal Government has customers. We have customers the American people."

OPM Policy. Through publications such as OPM's bimonthly newsletter Workforce Performance and Performance Management InfoPacks, OPM encourages agencies to align their systems and programs with agency goals and standards, which include customer service goals and standards.

Agency Policy. As required by E.O. 12862, agencies have submitted reports to the President on their customer survey activities and have made their customer service plans available to their customers. In September, 1994, a Report of the National Performance Review was published entitled Putting Customers First: Standards for Serving the American People. It lists more than 1,500 customer service standards from more than 100 Federal agencies.