IVR Customer Experience Survey Supporting Statement

Request for Approval under the “IRS Generic Clearance for Customer Satisfaction Research (Surveys)” (OMB Control Number: 1545-1432)

TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION:

IRS Enterprise Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Customer Experience Survey

PURPOSE:

IRS customer experience survey efforts are a direct result of Executive Order (EO) 12862 of 1993 requiring government agencies to gather constituents’ feedback for incorporation into process improvements. Collecting feedback from taxpayer customers is also part of the Service-wide effort to maintain a system of balanced organizational performance measures as mandated by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Restructuring and Reform Act (RRA) of 1998. The balanced measures include business results, employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction.

These surveys are a component of the agency-wide initiative to monitor and improve the services and customer experience provided through IRS toll-free phone channels. In addition to informing process and policy decisions of service providers, the results of these customer experience surveys will be reported inside the IRS and Treasury and comprise a portion of the IRS Balanced Measures as required by 26 CFR 801.

In the interest of conserving resources, and for the sake of comparability, these four customer experience surveys will include the same eight questions designed to meet OMB A-11-Section 280 requirements for other phone-based surveys in the Tax Law and Accounts, TAC (Taxpayer Assistance Center) Appointment Line, and ACS (Automated Collection System) phone lines. However, unlike these other customer experience surveys, these results will not be reported externally as part of the OMB CX CAPG (Customer Experience Cross Agency Priority Goals) / A-11 section 280 requirements for High Impact Service Providers (HISPs), and as such should best fit under the OMB PRA generic clearance 1545-1432.

Utilizing an Interactive Voice Response (IVR), the customer experience survey will capture feedback from customers across the following four phone lines:

1. Practitioner Priority Service (PPS)

2. eHelp Line

3. Tax Exempt Government Entities (TEGE)

4. Refundable Credits Examination Operations (RCEO)

The IRS Interactive Voice Response Customer Experience Survey will be administered continuously across all four phone lines for a period of three years.

DESCRIPTION OF RESPONDENTS:

Respondents for this survey are customers who use one of the following four IRS phone lines:

1. Practitioner Priority Service (PPS)

2. eHelp Line

3. Tax Exempt Government Entities (TEGE)

4. Refundable Credits Examination Operations (RCEO)

The IRS phone system randomly prompts the customer service representative (CSR) working with the customer to offer the Enterprise Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Customer Experience Survey. The survey is an interactive voice response survey and is administered through software within the phone system. Responses from participants will be captured as part of the Intelligent Contact Management (ICM) call logging system, and extracted for analysis using the Aceyus Software report generation tool.

TYPE OF COLLECTION: (Check one)

[ ] Customer Comment Card/Complaint Form [X] Customer Satisfaction Survey

[ ] Usability Testing (e.g., Website or Software [ ] Small Discussion Group

[ ] Focus Group [ ] Other:

CERTIFICATION:

I certify the following to be true:

1. The collection is voluntary.

2. The collection is low burden for respondents and low-cost for the Federal Government.

3. The collection is non-controversial and does not raise issues of concern to other federal agencies.

4. The results are not intended to be disseminated to the public.

5. Information gathered will not be used for the purpose of substantially informing influential policy decisions.

6. The collection is targeted to the solicitation of opinions from respondents who have experience with the program or may have experience with the program in the future.

Name: ___Ben Shackleford_______________________

To assist review, please provide answers to the following question:

Personally Identifiable Information:

1. Is personally identifiable information (PII) collected? [X] Yes [ ] No

2. If Yes, is the information that will be collected included in records that are subject to the Privacy Act of 1974? [X] Yes [ ] No

3. If Applicable, has a System or Records Notice been published? [X] Yes [ ] No

Gifts or Payments:

Is an incentive (e.g., money or reimbursement of expenses, token of appreciation) provided to participants? [ ] Yes [X] No

BURDEN HOURS

The total burden hours per year for the survey is = 2,605 burden hours

The total burden hours for three years of survey administration is = 7,815 burden hours

Respondent Category	Number of Respondents	Participation Time	Burden Hours
Listening to survey invitation	245,000	.5 minutes	2,042 h
Survey participation	11,250	3 minutes	563 h
Total Burden			2,605 h

FEDERAL COST:

The total estimated cost is $84,685.

Description	Hrs./Yr	Avg. Hourly Rate¹	Yearly Cost
GS-15 Survey Programing	48	$70.19	$3,369
GS-15 Survey Maintenance	6	$70.19	$421
GS-13 Project Lead	704	$50.49	$35,545
GS-11 Project Analyst	1,280	$35.43	$45,350
Totals	2,038		$84,685

¹ 2025 General Schedule (Rest of United States), Step 1

STATISTICAL METHOD:

If you are conducting a focus group, survey, or plan to employ statistical methods, please provide answers to the following questions:

The selection of your targeted respondents

1. Do you have a customer list or something similar that defines the universe of potential respondents, and do you have a sampling plan for selecting from this universe? [X] Yes [ ] No

If the answer is yes, please provide a description of both below (or attach the sampling plan)? If the answer is no, please provide a description of how you plan to identify your potential group of respondents and how you will select them?

The universe of potential respondents will be randomly selected from the total population of customer calls resulting in an interaction with a Customer Service Representative (CSR), from the following IRS toll-free phone lines:

1. Practitioner Priority Service (PPS)

2. eHelp Line

3. Tax Exempt Government Entities (TEGE)

4. Refundable Credits Examination Operations (RCEO)

Each business day, toll-free calls will be randomly selected for each line by the IRS call center software. At the end of the service interaction, if prompted, the CSR will invite sampled callers to participate in the survey. If caller give consent, the CSR transfers them to the IRS Enterprise Interactive Voice Response system in which the survey is conducted.

A sampling frame will be established for phone line at each call center based on the estimated quarterly case volumes.

Administration of the Instrument

1. How will you collect the information? (Check all that apply)

[ ] Web-based or other forms of Social Media

[X] Telephone

[ ] In-person

[ ] Mail

[ ] Other, Explain

2. Will interviewers or facilitators be used? [ ] Yes [X] No

Please make sure that all instruments, instructions, and scripts are submitted with the request.

NOTE: included in a separate attachment.

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