PCG’s Customer Assessment of the U.S. Courts PACER Service

Palo Alto, CA—April 2009—The U.S. Courts Administrative Office has contracted with Pacific Consulting Group (PCG) to conduct a customer satisfaction assessment of the Electronic Public Access Program. This will be the first comprehensive assessment to provide the Administrative Office a better understanding of customers’ perceptions and expectations of the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER), an electronic public access service that provides Internet access to obtain case and docket information from Federal Appellate, District, and Bankruptcy courts. Links to all U.S. Courts are provided from the PACER Web site, and the U.S. Party/Case Index allows users to search across all of those courts. Users of the PACER service span a wide range, including U.S. Court administrative and judicial staff, attorneys/law firms, government agencies, universities, media, researchers, bulk users, and the general public.

PCG is conducting interviews with Administrative Office staff in Washington, DC headquarters and the operations center in San Antonio, TX, as well as frequent users from the Department of Justice, to inform the final research framework. PCG will conduct focus groups with multiple user segments to inform the design of an online customer satisfaction survey; PCG will then use their Net Impression® Leverage analysis tool to prioritize the survey results to identify users’ top priorities for improvements and added features. PCG will facilitate innovation processes in partnership with Administrative Office staff to identify and design improvements and concrete action plans to address the top customer priorities for the PACER service and potentially the case management system.

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.