PCG Trains Senior Managers on Customer-Focused Improvement

Palo Alto, CA—May 2009—Pacific Consulting Group (PCG) will continue for the fourth consecutive year to train IRS managers on how to lead customer-focused improvement projects. The Internal Revenue Service’s Small Business and Self-Employed Division (SB/SE) originally contracted with PCG to design, develop, and deliver a two-and-a-half-day customer satisfaction improvement course as part of the SB/SE Senior Management Readiness Program (SMRP). This first-of-its-kind course addresses how IRS managers, aspiring to senior management positions, can make use of the IRS’s significant investment in customer satisfaction research to promote innovation and improvements in service.

 

The course imparts the knowledge, practical experience, communication skills, risk assessment, and commitment that managers need in order to undertake concrete improvement planning and implementation. The curriculum incorporates private and public sector best practices and cases studies in customer leadership and innovation to demonstrate customer-driven improvement planning. Participants are immersed in interactive exercises representing each step of an improvement planning project from conception to generating ideas and potential solutions to piloting solutions and follow- up measurement. To improve communication skills, specific modules offer role-playing and actual examples of how to influence and gain commitment from executives and stakeholders to move ideas and change solutions forward.

Due to the popularity and success of this program, PCG conducted the training with the IRS team three times in 2008 and is planning at least two training sessions in 2009. The curriculum will be refreshed with new case studies and best practices for 2009, and PCG will develop a digital interactive training video in 2010.

The training has garnered very high marks in the training evaluation results and interest from other IRS division managers, as well as a recommendation that it become a permanent part of the SMRP curriculum in the future—evidence that government managers are interested in making a difference through positive change and improvement!

About Pacific Consulting Group

Pacific Consulting Group (PCG) is a management consulting firm specializing in helping organizations improve their customers' and employees' experience and satisfaction. PCG's flagship service is the proprietary Net Impression^® process, which integrates measurement and action into a strategic approach that perpetuates change. PCG's services include designing customer/employee assessment strategies, conducting qualitative research, designing and administering surveys, analyzing and prioritizing improvement targets, and action planning to turn market research into successful innovations that improve the customer/employee experience and business results.