Secretary Wilkie delivers State of VA to House Committee on Appropriations

Secretary Wilkie’s written testimony excerpts are italicized below.

Customer Experience Data

Veterans Signals

VA now employs Veterans Signals. Veterans Signals is a world-class customer service/customer experience (CS/CX) process that aligns VA with the best private sector practices. VA Signals provides VA leaders, decision-makers, and service providers at all levels with near real-time feedback from Veterans, family members, caregivers, and many others. And it provides both quantitative and qualitative information that helps identify opportunities to improve the care and benefits experience and hold ourselves accountable to meeting our Veterans’ needs.

In June 2017, VEO deployed VA’s first service-level survey to measure the Veteran Experience with VHA’s outpatient services. During the first month of the outpatient services surveys, VA’s trust score was at 84.7 percent. Since then, the trust score has risen almost every month. In September 2018, the trust score was 86.8 4 percent. In January 2019, the trust score was 87.9 percent, a 3.2 percent increase since mid-2017.

VEO also administers the quarterly VA-Wide Trust Survey to measure trust across the VA. Since VEO deployed this survey, the VA-Wide Trust has increased from 55 percent in FY 2016 Q2 to 73 percent in FY 2019 Q1. And we are on a steady, positive course. Just since last quarter (FY 2018 Q4), Trust rose three percent from 70 percent to 73 percent, Effectiveness rose two percent from 77 percent to 79 percent, Ease rose one percent from 69 percent to 70 percent, and Emotion rose two percent from 71 percent to 73 percent.

These metrics are reported quarterly and can be viewed on performance.gov.

For the first time in many years, VA’s overall customer satisfaction rate is on a steady rise. Ninety-two percent of VAMCs have seen Veterans’ trust increase in 2018 because of staff training in patient experience programs like the Red Coat Ambassadors. Our Red Coat Ambassadors wear distinctive red coats and greet, assist, and escort visitors and patients. That is a sign of our work regaining Veterans’ trust.

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