ForeSee Study Reveals That Citizen Satisfaction With E-Government Rivals Private Sector Customer Experience

ANN ARBOR, MI--(Marketwired - Mar 9, 2016) - ForeSee, the leader in Voice of Customer solutions, today released its 50th consecutive E-Government Satisfaction Index revealing that citizen satisfaction with digital government is high and rivals private sector customer experience. The study ranks 101 federal websites to measure the effectiveness of their customer experience efforts and highlight key areas for improvement. ForeSee collected more than 185,000 responses for the fourth quarter 2015 and has measured 10 million responses over the 12 years of its index.

"Our data shows that as people experience positive interactions with e-government, satisfaction with, and trust in, government increases. In fact, in several cases the federal government's digital properties are outperforming top private-sector sites like Amazon and Google," said Dave Lewan, report author and Vice President at ForeSee. "Our index gives the public sector a systematic approach to measure and improve the citizen experience over time, across channels, and to compare performance with the best industry standards."

Key Findings From This Quarter's Index

• The Social Security Administration (SSA) has the highest-scoring public sector sites with scores of 90 and 89, which is higher than the top-scoring and most successful private-sector sites like Amazon.com (86), Vanguard.com (80), Google (78), Pinterest (78), Expedia (77) and NYTimes.com (76).
• In 2015, the number of e-government sites with an 80+ rating jumped from 30% to 36%.
• Overall citizen satisfaction is currently at 75.1, up from 70 in 2003 when the first E-Gov Index was published. 
• Top priorities for improvement are navigation and search features.

"The ForeSee E-Government Satisfaction Index is the gold standard in measurement of citizen engagement with the digital government world," said Michael Messinger, former Performance Manager at OMB, Internet Director at Voice of America, and Communications and Marketing Director at USA.gov. "Precise, accurate, reliable measurement gives federal agencies, departments, and programs the ability to focus their efforts on improving outcomes rather than just collecting citizen feedback and resorting to business as usual."

ForeSee Recognizes Top Performers in E-Government Satisfaction
To mark the 50th anniversary of its E-government Satisfaction Index, ForeSee and the Federal Consulting Group will recognize the best-performing departments, agencies, and programs at its annual Public Sector Forum on April 4, 2016 in Washington DC. Awards will be given to the federal websites with the highest scores in quarterly performance in the current index, for all of 2015, and over the 12-year history of the study.

Methodology
Using its multi-patented and systematic approach, ForeSee measures satisfaction on a 100-point scale. Scores of 80 and higher are recognized as meeting or exceeding the standards of excellence for highly satisfied visitors. Scores below 70 represent less satisfied visitors and indicate a need for improvement. More than 185,000 responses were collected across 100 federal government websites for the quarter measured in this index.

Download this quarter's E-Government citizen experience report at foresee.com.

About ForeSee
Founded in 2001, ForeSee is the pioneering leader in Voice of Customer (VOC) solutions. Armed with the ForeSee CX Suite, more than 2,000 companies worldwide -- in retail, government, financial services, healthcare, consumer packaged goods, and other industries -- have transformed their VOC programs into a strategic and rigorous business discipline that delivers economic impact. Only ForeSee offers a multi-patented algorithmic approach to customer experience measurement, access to an unmatched 150 million benchmarked experiences, and actionable insights from a team of 200 expert analysts that give certainty to CX improvements. A subsidiary of Answers Corporation, ForeSee is headquartered in Ann Arbor, MI and has offices in Mountain View, New York, St. Louis, Cleveland, Vancouver, and London. For more information, visit www.foresee.com.