Hearing the Voice of the Customer

Note: EPA no longer updates this information, but it may be useful as a reference or resource.

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Guidelines for Customer Feedback and Customer Satisfaction Measurement

The "Guidelines" document was designed to help EPA and its partner organizations develop useful customer feedback and measure satisfaction with their organizations' services, products and processes.

How These Guidelines Were Developed (PDF) (1 pg, 18K)

Preface (PDF) (2 pp, 19K)

Introduction (PDF) (3 pp, 27K)

Why is customer feedback necessary?
Who can use the Guidelines?
Why have Guidelines for customer feedback?
How are the Guidelines organized?

Plan the Customer Feedback Project (PDF) (10 pp, 45K)

Who should conduct a customer feedback initiative?
How ready is your organization for customer feedback?
What kinds of customer feedback are already occurring?
What are the core questions to ask for customer feedback?

How often should we ask customers for feedback?
How long should feedback activity take?
Who are our customers and with what services and products do we supply them?

Why establish quality control procedures in customer feedback activities?
Develop a written plan for the customer survey (checklist).
The plan (checklist).

Construct Data Collection Procedures (PDF) (16 pp, 62K)

What is the "best" approach for assessing customer satisfaction?

Continuous assessment

Decide on data collection method

The sample
Determining the sample size
Develop the questions
Construct the questionnaire
Pretest
OMB clearance
Additional resources
Contingency for nonresponse
Effective questions (checklist)
Choose an approach (checklist)

Conduct Data Collection (PDF) (6 pp, 28K)

Focus groups
Mail surveys
Telephone surveys
Electronic feedback

Analyze the Data (PDF) (12 pp, 120K)

Data cleanup
Types of data and analyses
Analysis: An example
Driver analysis
Presenting the data
Formulating recommendations based on the data
Presenting recommendations--Using graphics
On developing recommendations

Act on the Results (PDF) (4 pp, 24K)

Is this the beginning or the end of the process?
How do you decide what to do with the feedback you receive?
How good is good enough?
How do we know what to work on first?

Suggested Reading (PDF) (2 pp, 8K)

Factsheets (in PDF format)
Factsheet I (2 pp, 16K) Factsheet II (1 pg, 5K) Factsheet III (7 pp, 25K) Factsheet IV (11 pp, 37K) Factsheet V (11 pp, 34K) Factsheet VI (33 pp, 189K) Factsheet VII (5 pp, 34K) Factsheet VIII (5 pp, 112K) Factsheet IX (5 pp, 15K)	Who are EPA's Customers? EPA internal control procedures Sampling--The basics Sampling--More on sample size Sampling--More advanced topics How to obtain clearance for EPA Customer Satisfaction Surveys Unit of analysis Examples of graphs for presenting customer feedback results Survey software information

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Hearing the Voice of the Customer

Table of Contents

Factsheets (in PDF format)

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