Customer Experience Management: The Key to Efficiency and Cost Savings for Federal Agencies

By Angela Mercado, RELI Group Senior Director of National Security & Safety

For federal agencies and their industry partners, the stakes have never been higher. With public trust in government still low but showing signs of improvement, agencies are under increasing pressure to deliver efficient, cost-effective programs that better meet the needs of all Americans. How can they seize this moment of progress, meet rising expectations, and align with the new administration’s priorities? The answer lies in a proven approach: customer experience (CX) management.

Government programs and services impact all Americans. In addition to the 30% of the U.S. population who participated in social safety net programs in 2019, every American must pay taxes and will one day become eligible for Medicare. According to the Pew Research Center’s June 2024 report, Public Trust in Government: 1958-2024, only 22% of Americans expressed trust in the federal government to do what is right “just about always” (2%) or “most of the time” (21%). This marks a notable improvement from 2023, when just 16% reported similar levels of trust. Additionally, data from Performance.gov’s Customer Feedback Dashboard highlights a sustained positive trend in public trust. With the incoming administration prioritizing increased government efficiency and cost reduction, the key question remains: how can federal agencies and industry partners continue to improve the public’s trust in government while aligning with these new priorities?

The answer is Customer Experience (CX) Management. The President’s Management Agenda goals and outcomes across the last three administrations have strategically equipped federal agencies with maturing CX data, programs, and information sharing across the government. A continued focus on CX drives sustainable, long-term efficiencies and cost savings while ensuring the timely and accessible delivery of mission-critical services and resources to the public.

Sustainable, Long-Term Efficiencies

Using Human Centered Design (HCD) principles, CX management simplifies processes by identifying and addressing constituents’ pain points in their customer journey. For federal agencies, identifying pain points can be challenging without the right tools and expertise. Industry partners help overcome these challenges by applying proven HCD methodologies to engage stakeholders—both constituents who use the programs and agency employees who deliver them—to uncover pain points and underlying challenges that may otherwise go unnoticed.

Identifying user pain points and challenges reveals inefficient workflows or service delivery, uncovering opportunities to simplify processes, reduce duplication, and minimize delays. By facilitating clear communication between agency leaders, program managers and frontline teams, contractors ensure these opportunities are communicated effectively and actionable solutions are developed.

Additionally, CX initiatives often identify issues that require back-end process improvement. As contractors, we help agencies implement solutions like robotic process automation (RPA) to manage data entry, reducing administrative burdens and freeing employees up to focus on higher value, complex tasks. This not only accelerates time to delivery, but also ensures critical services remain sustainable within tight budgets and timelines.

Cost Savings

Streamlining service delivery often requires upfront investments, such as CX and HCD expertise or improved data collection, but it creates opportunities for sustainable savings. For instance, instead of each agency maintaining separate technology investments, by identifying where agencies are utilizing similar resources to meet constituent needs, the government could reduce costs by implementing a shared, government-wide license for commonly used resources.

Further, the government established the Life Experience Framework to create a collaborative, customer-focused approach to improving service delivery across agencies and levels of government, breaking down bureaucratic silos. These types of initiatives identify redundancies, bring potential cost savings, and improve the overall customer experience. By removing the burden of navigating multiple websites, offices, and phone numbers, agencies are able to meet constituent needs in a way that makes sense to them without requiring a deep understanding of which agencies provide which specific benefits and resources. Continuing this work will enable the government to keep identifying opportunities to streamline and bringing to light redundancies that can eliminate unnecessary spending.

Industry can support federal budgetary priorities by taking a holistic view of agency portfolios to identify opportunities for greater efficiency. For example, are similar processes or technologies being used under separate licenses across different programs or offices? Could siloed federal teams be connected to explore shared services? When reviewing a procurement, if you recognize that similar work is being delivered at another agency, there may be an opportunity to leverage that existing knowledge and establish a shared service model around the technology. As federal procurement continues to evolve, identifying and proposing cost-saving opportunities—and adapting to meet government agencies where they are—can drive impactful results and open the door of opportunity.

Investing in CX management and leveraging approaches like the Life Experience Framework not only enhances public trust but also lays the foundation for a more efficient, cost-effective government. By prioritizing human-centered design, streamlining processes, and adopting collaborative, cross-agency strategies, federal agencies can deliver services that are accessible, impactful, and responsive to the needs of all Americans. Continuing this focus will enable the government to build on recent progress, reduce unnecessary spending, and ensure that critical programs remain reliable and sustainable for future generations.

Angela Mercado – Senior Director, National Security & Safety

Angela Mercado is RELI’s Senior Director of National Security & Safety. She is passionate about connecting people to the services and information they need, exemplified by the breadth of her experience supporting government communications, technology and change management initiatives. From winning a ClearMark award from the Center for Plain Language in 2012 for her plain language rewrite of the HHS website Flu.gov, to leading the design and implementation of TSA’s customer experience strategy, which resulted in the TSA client team receiving the 2021 Service to the Citizen award, Angela keeps the human at the center of her work.

With two decades of digital services, communications and human-centered design experience, Angela has supported both the legislative and executive branches of the government. After beginning her career in the private sector, she spent more than four years supporting the U.S. House of Representatives as a web content developer and reference assistant. Angela has dedicated the last 12 years to government service as a consultant for various small to large consulting firms. Her experience primarily focused on public health through HHS and its numerous staff and operating divisions, before broadening her scope at RELI Group to include defense and security agencies, including TSA.

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