Veterans Benefits Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs
The Veterans Benefits Administration provides a wide array of services for veterans, including education and career training benefits.
Veterans appreciate the agency’s proactive communications—especially during the uncertainty of the pandemic—and the agency is now working to target its messages to meet customers’ need for more personalized information.
VBA is also beginning a modernization effort that will enable veterans to interact with the agency through additional channels, such as text and web chat, and get access to real-time information about their eligibility and benefits.
Service Overview
VBA supports veterans in multiple ways, including through education and disability benefits, pensions and home loans. Each year, the agency provides education benefits to nearly a million veterans and service members, as well as their families, helping them find the right schools or training programs, pay education expenses and access career counseling.
Primary customers
Veterans, service members and their families.
Key education and training services (all data for fiscal year 2020)
- Information about eligibility for education and training benefits, the application process and status of payments.
- Processing of claims and applications for education and training benefits programs.
- 3.5 million education benefits claims processed.
- Payment of tuition and fees, monthly housing stipends, books and other related expenses.
- $11.5 billion in benefits paid.
- Assistance with finding schools where veterans can use their benefits.
- Education and career counseling to support job searches, identify training programs and help veterans achieve their training and employment goals.
- Coordination with school officials, so they understand the VBA benefits available and can answer the questions veterans frequently ask.
Service Snapshot (all data for fiscal year 2020)
- 2 million calls answered by the VA Education Call Center.
- Average wait time: 2 minutes.
- 6.7 million calls answered by the National Call Center, which handles other non-education benefit inquiries.
- Average wait time: ~3 minutes.
- 56 VBA regional offices.1
Data Highlights
education benefit claims processed.
of veterans surveyed felt they were treated with courtesy and respect by VBA call center staff.
Customer Experience Insights
Improvement from last year
Room for improvement
VBA conducts nationwide email campaigns and other outreach to provide veterans with information about applying for and using education benefits. Veterans have shared that these communications are particularly helpful during times of change, such as the coronavirus pandemic, when many veterans may have similar questions, according to VBA officials. However, through their customer research, VBA officials have heard from veterans that the amount of information provided can be overwhelming and that veterans would like to receive fewer, more personalized messages. In response to this feedback, VBA has consolidated some of the messaging it sends to customers and begun sending more targeted messaging to specific groups of customers based on their particular situation—such as applying for benefits or if an individual is about to graduate from college—and what information would be most relevant and useful at that time.
VBA’s customer research has shown that veterans would like more online self-service opportunities to manage and receive their education benefits, as well as the ability to communicate with VBA through additional digital channels. The agency is currently working on a large-scale modernization effort, called the Digital GI Bill, to improve how education benefits are delivered and provide veterans with a better experience. The modernized online platform developed as part of this effort will use the secure, authenticated account process already in place on VA.gov, and will provide veterans with the ability to call, email, text and chat with the agency to get real-time answers to questions about eligibility and benefits. The account will also enable veterans to easily and immediately access their own records without having to wait for VBA to provide them. For example, as part of this new platform, veterans will be able to access digital copies of certificates of eligibility or denial letters the day decisions are made, rather than needing to wait for a copy to be mailed to them. As it implements this initiative, VBA is using human-centered design to ensure that the final product meets veterans’ needs.
VBA’s National Call Center answers questions about all types of VBA benefits, including training and disability benefits. Callers in fiscal 2021 rated the call center’s staff highly but indicated that they did not always get all the information they were looking for during a call.
To improve veterans’ call center experience, the agency has expanded its ability to quickly resolve common issues on their first call. Veterans seeking certain information corrections or changes can now have their records updated instantaneously when calling the agency.
[chart]Leading Customer Experience Practices
The Partnership and Accenture developed the following list of practices to understand how agencies prioritize the customer experience, and steps they can take to improve. The list is based on research about effective customer experience practices in both government and the private sector, and aligns with practices in a customer experience maturity self-assessment for agencies developed by the Office of Management and Budget.
Footnote
- VBA’s education services are available in two of the 56 regional offices.
- Data from an email survey distributed to customers after they have interacted with VBA’s National Call Center. Responses on a five-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” Percentages represent the average percentage of respondents who answered four or five in Q2 and Q3 of fiscal 2021.
Customer experience indicators methodology
The Partnership and Accenture developed the following list of practices to understand how agencies prioritize the customer experience, and steps they can take to improve. The list is based on research about effective customer experience practices in government and the private sector, and aligns with practices in a customer experience maturity self-assessment for agencies developed by the Office of Management and Budget.
Organizational Commitment
A strong commitment and plan from agency leaders to prioritize customer experience is essential for sustained progress.
The agency:
- Includes high-quality customer experience in its strategic goals.
- Criteria: a) customer experience with the agency’s services is listed in the strategic plan as one of the organization’s top priorities, or a supporting goal of one of the priorities b) the strategic plan provides specific actions the agency will take to improve customer experience
- Criteria: a) customer experience with the agency’s services is listed in the strategic plan as one of the organization’s top priorities, or a supporting goal of one of the priorities b) the strategic plan provides specific actions the agency will take to improve customer experience
- Specifies customer feedback as a key measure of the organization’s performance.
- Criteria: There is a performance measure included in the agency’s strategic plan, annual performance report or agency priority goals that is based on feedback directly from customers.
- Criteria: There is a performance measure included in the agency’s strategic plan, annual performance report or agency priority goals that is based on feedback directly from customers.
- Has a senior executive with the responsibility and authority to lead efforts to improve the customer experience across the organization.
- Criteria: Based on a review of the agency’s organizational chart and online descriptions of leadership positions, the agency has an executive who meets the following criteria: a) customer experience is that executive’s primary responsibility b) the executive reports to the head of the organization or a deputy c) the executive’s work spans all major service delivery channels (e.g., online services, contact centers, face-to-face services).
Ease of Customer Interactions
Interactions with the federal government should be easy, transparent and designed around user needs.
For the most common services provided, customers can:
- Complete common transactions using the service delivery channel of their choice.
- Criteria: Based on a review of the agency’s website, customers have multiple options to complete common transactions including going online, calling, using webchat and visiting field offices or other physical locations.
- Criteria: Based on a review of the agency’s website, customers have multiple options to complete common transactions including going online, calling, using webchat and visiting field offices or other physical locations.
- Obtain status updates through online self-service.
- Criteria: customers can get real-time updates through an online self-service channel that provides estimated timelines.
- Criteria: customers can get real-time updates through an online self-service channel that provides estimated timelines.
- Receive a response to feedback or answers to questions over social media.
- Criteria: Does the agency respond to questions through the direct message feature on Facebook and Twitter, or in the comment section of posts? To assess this, we examined social media posts on the service’s primary account across a three-month period. “No” indicates the agency never or rarely responds to comments; “partially” indicates the agency responds sometimes, but not consistently; and “yes” indicates the agency responds to comments on a frequent and consistent basis.
- Criteria: Does the agency respond to questions through the direct message feature on Facebook and Twitter, or in the comment section of posts? To assess this, we examined social media posts on the service’s primary account across a three-month period. “No” indicates the agency never or rarely responds to comments; “partially” indicates the agency responds sometimes, but not consistently; and “yes” indicates the agency responds to comments on a frequent and consistent basis.
- Access online information and support in languages other than English.
- Criteria: “No” indicates content is available only in English and translation features are not available on the website; “partially” indicates that some content or services are available in English and Spanish; “yes” indicates that content or services are available in English and Spanish and additional languages.
Listening to Customers and Acting on Feedback
To understand and prioritize customer needs, agencies should collect, publish, analyze and act on feedback.
The agency:
- Collects meaningful customer experience data across interactions and service delivery channels and shares it with the public.
- Criteria: In alignment with the Office of Management and Budget’s guidance on customer experience measurement, the agency shares customer feedback with the public and that: a) represents multiple service delivery channels b) provides details into different aspects of the experience (i.e., beyond overall customer satisfaction)
- Criteria: In alignment with the Office of Management and Budget’s guidance on customer experience measurement, the agency shares customer feedback with the public and that: a) represents multiple service delivery channels b) provides details into different aspects of the experience (i.e., beyond overall customer satisfaction)
- Collects and analyzes first-hand customer feedback to understand customers’ experiences, based on their own words.
- Criteria: In alignment with Office of Management and Budget’s guidance on customer experience measurement, in customer or user research such as interviews, focus groups, surveys and other feedback mechanisms, customers can describe their experiences in their own words, and the agency has automated analytic capabilities to identify and act on insights that emerge from customer feedback data.
- Criteria: In alignment with Office of Management and Budget’s guidance on customer experience measurement, in customer or user research such as interviews, focus groups, surveys and other feedback mechanisms, customers can describe their experiences in their own words, and the agency has automated analytic capabilities to identify and act on insights that emerge from customer feedback data.
- Aggregates and analyzes customer feedback across channels and programs, and shares feedback with relevant staff members so they can act on it.
- Criteria: Agency has an automated system to collect feedback across multiple channels and programs into a centralized location, analyze it for insights, and share those insights with relevant agency business owners or other appropriate colleagues responsible for taking action. The agency also tracks the impact of actions taken in response to customer feedback.
This customer experience profile was produced in collaboration with Accenture Federal Services.