Research Reveals E-Government Outperforms Private Sector in Citizen Satisfaction amidst Increased Mobile Adoption

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Oct. 29, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- ForeSee, the global leader in technology-driven customer experience analytics, today released the 2013 third-quarter E-Government Satisfaction Index in partnership with the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The report revealed that federal government websites led their private sector counterparts in citizen satisfaction and that people increasingly turn to mobile devices to access the Internet.

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The ACSI E-Government Satisfaction Index is a comprehensive reflection of citizens' experience with federal government websites and serves as a checkpoint for evaluating the success and performance of these websites. The methodology, which identifies key drivers of online satisfaction and quantifies their relationship to overall citizen satisfaction, has been proven to predict how citizens will behave in the future. On the 100-point citizen satisfaction scale, a score of 80 or higher is considered the threshold for excellence that is achieved when a site meets and exceeds citizen expectations.

"Measuring citizen satisfaction accurately predicts how likely people are to participate with the government website in the future and use the site as a primary resource," said Dave Lewan, vice president at ForeSee. "In recent years the federal government has invested significant time and resources in digital initiatives with the aim of providing more cost-efficient channels for communication – understanding that a positive experience will keep citizens coming back to the online functions rather than opting to use costlier channels such as branch locations or contact centers."

For the 2013 third-quarter ACSI E-Government Satisfaction Index, ForeSee collected more than 270,000 survey responses across 105 federal government websites. Key findings included

• E-Government outperforms private sector counterparts – Average citizen satisfaction with e-government is 74.9 on the study's 100-point scale, higher than comparable private sector e-business websites, such as portals, search engines, news and information and social media sites (71.8). Three of the Social Security Administration's websites have citizen satisfaction scores of 90, outdoing every top-performing private sector e-commerce website measured in the ACSI E-Commerce Report (February, 2013), including Amazon.
• Uptick in e-government mobile access – More than half (55 percent) of government website visitors reported ever using a mobile phone or tablet to access the Internet, showing an increase from 52 percent last quarter and 48 percent in the fourth-quarter of 2012. More than one-third (37 percent) of visitors reported having accessed any federal government website using a mobile phone or tablet, compared to 34 percent in the second-quarter of 2013.
• Government healthcare sites achieve high satisfaction scores – Healthcare sites score high in the ACSI E-Government Satisfaction Index. Almost 40% of the top-scoring (80 or above) federal government websites were from the Health and Human Resources Department, with both the English and Spanish versions of the MedlinePlus website leading the department with an 88.  Cancer.gov had a citizen satisfaction score of 82, making it the leader of the 33 federal government websites in the Portals and Department Main category. Girlshealth.gov was a top gainer from last quarter, with a six-point increase in citizen satisfaction.

"E-government has outperformed the private sector according to the most recent ACSI study, but the federal government has failed to improve citizen satisfaction in the past four years with average scores hovering around 75," said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee. "As more citizens continue to access the Internet using mobile devices, mobile site improvement presents one of the best opportunities for the government organizations to improve citizen satisfaction and increase usage rates."

A complete list and analysis of citizen satisfaction scores for individual federal government websites across E-Commerce and Transaction, News and Information, Portals and Department Main, and Careers and Recruitment categories can be viewed in the third quarter ACSE E-Government Satisfaction Index.

About ForeSee
As a pioneer in customer experience analytics, ForeSee continuously measures satisfaction across customer touchpoints and delivers critical insights on where to prioritize improvements for maximum impact. Because ForeSee's superior technology and proven methodology connect the customer experience to the bottom line, executives and managers are able to drive future success by confidently optimizing the efforts that will achieve business and brand objectives. The result is better business for companies and a better experience for consumers. Visit www.foresee.com for customer experience solutions and original research.

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SOURCE ForeSee