The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is a crucial cog in the US federal government, supporting the farmers and food producers of America. To do that, the organisation needs to know exactly what farmers need. That’s why FPAC – the Farm Production and Conservation Business Center – exists. It is the first department of its kind. It combines multiple key agencies to improve what USDA does with a boots-on-the-ground approach. Abena Apau, Acting Customer Experience Division Director and FPAC Customer Experience Officer, and Kimberly Iczkowski, Senior Customer Experience Strategist, are core members of the Customer Experience Division (CXD) within FPAC, overseeing that personal connection between the USDA and the farmers it serves.
Defining customer experience
The point of FPAC is to serve the customers – AKA, the farmers. Within FPAC itself, there are four agencies. The FSA, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), the Risk Management Agency (RMA), and then the FPAC Business Center – the administrative side – where Apau and Iczkowski sit. The FSA and NRCS are considered high-impact service providers because they’re so in-person heavy with farmers. They have 2,100 offices across America that farmers can simply walk into and give feedback, ask questions, and get support.
Then there’s the RMA, which oversees the crop insurance program. This creates the rules and policies while private agents provide the actual insurance. On the CXD side, the goal was always to make sure those service agencies are doing what they’re supposed to do and providing what the customers need. On a broader level, the aim is also to develop a customer experience culture.
How the culture has evolved
The core tenets of CXD have essentially remained the same. The division has focused on the voice of the customer and the employee, service design, gathering data and feedback, and the overall culture of the division and beyond. Those core pillars have stood the test of time. Apau and Iczkowski have seen great success with them since the CXD was established.
“What has shifted is that, while we began with a lot of education and developing leadership buy-in based on the fact that a lot of people thought customer experience would be very digital-focused, we had to start making it clear that there’s much more to it than that,” Apau continues. “We were even willing to put the digital aside entirely and focus on what people really needed. When we sent out surveys to farmers, we sent them on paper. And, 93% also responded on paper. Most of them don’t want to do it digitally. So we’ve had to work on making people understand that we’re willing to meet them where they are and lean into what they actually require.”
By communicating that CXD and FPAC are able and happy to adapt to what the customer needs, customers are coming to them – not the other way around. The CXD is no longer laying its foundation. It is engaging in conversations and partnerships where people want to work with it, grow the programs, and solidify the connections between what they’re doing and what customer experience seeks to offer farmers.
