Delivering Great Customer Service: Essentials for Government Web Managers



Description

This is a survey course designed to familiarize or refresh you on the most important things government web managers need to do to produce and manage websites that deliver great customer service.  We’ll talk about how you know what your customers want, how you write and organize your website to make it easy for your customers to use, and how you measure success.  We’ll touch on all the basics—from governance to usability to social media to leadership—and talk about how each of those factors impacts customer service.  You’ll get practical tips and tools to help you be the best service provider you can be. 

While much of the course is lecture, we’ve built-in time for discussion and hands-on practice of skills like using plain language and developing metrics that really measure achievement of your objectives. 

Again—this is a survey course that will touch on many topics. You won’t come away expert in any one area, but you will leave (re)learning a little bit about each of the major areas key to delivering great customer service through the web.  And you’ll know where you need to learn more. We’ll arm you with plenty of resources for future reference. Best of all, you’ll meet more of your web colleagues—others who are facing the same challenges you are. 

About the Instructor

Candi Harrison was Department Web Manager at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1995-2005. Under Candi’s leadership, HUD won numerous web awards, including the first Digital Government Award, presented by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Accenture for outstanding use of the Internet to serve citizens (2000); the E-Gov Trailblazer Award for HUD's free web clinics for HUD partners (2001); and the E-Gov Pioneer Award for HUD's ground-breaking government information kiosks (1999). HUD’s web strategies and operations were cited as “best practices” in numerous studies and reviews during Candi’s tenure.

In 2000, Candi founded and led the Web Content Managers Forum to help government web managers—federal, state, and local—exchange best practices and lessons learned. This group now has nearly 3,000 members across the country.

In 2004, Candi co-chaired the working group that recommended policies and best practices for federal public websites. She co-chaired the Federal Web Managers Council from its creation in 2004 until she retired in late 2005. She organized and led workshops in Washington DC and across the country to train government web managers on federal web policies and best practices; and she helped create the website, Webcontent.gov (expanded in 2011 to HowTo.gov), as a resource for government web managers.

Candi retired in October 2005, after 24 years of federal government service, all at HUD. Since then, Candi has taught courses and workshops on web management and customer service for the General Services Administration’s DigitalGov University, Government Educator, and others. An advocate for plain writing, Candi served as a judge for both the Clearmark Plain Language Awards, in the United States, and the WriteMark New Zealand Plain English awards in 2010. Her highly praised blog, Candi On Content, chronicles her experiences and ideas to improve the way government communicates with and serves citizens. 

From 1974 to 1980, Candi was a member of student services staffs at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA and Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ. She holds a Bachelors Degree in English Education and a Masters Degree in Higher Education Administration, both from Indiana University.

Candi lives in Tucson, Arizona.
 

Content Lead: DigitalGov University Team
Page Reviewed/Updated: May 17, 2012