IRS to Boost Acquisition Capabilities for Enhancing CX
For any agency seeking to enhance its customer experience (CX) capabilities, it is important to develop the right procurement capabilities for best meeting and exceeding the needs of constituents and industry partners.
Coming off of many successes around enhancing the taxpayer experience, the IRS is launching a new acquisition office that will implement an agile method that removes inconsistent guidance from procurement personnel, according to this recent GovCIO article.
In the article, IRS Deputy Chief Procurement Officer Guy Torres noted that “customers will see increased customer service, increased contracting officer engagement with the customer base, and increased procurement bench strength.”
The new IRS acquisition office will allow end users to share their opinions on products and services throughout the agile process, as well as empower IRS procurement professionals to serve as business advisors for the vendor community.
This news comes on the heels of the IRS announcing other significant CX milestones. The agency celebrated its 1 millionth document submission via a new document upload tool. It also has been leveraging AI translation capabilities that reduce the time for translation by 90 percent – allowing non-English-speaking taxpayers to receive information at the same rate as English speakers.
In addition, the IRS announced that it will be making Direct File permanent, after a successful pilot this tax season in 12 U.S. states for the 2024 tax season. This tax season, 140,803 taxpayers filed their taxes using Direct File. The effort also saved filers an estimated $5.6 million in tax preparation fees for federal returns.
The IRS has made tremendous strides in bringing its 2023 strategic operating plan for enhancing CX to life. Much of this plan focused on addressing wait times for IRS phone lines, better processing of paper tax returns, enhanced electronic filing, as well as the ability for taxpayers to quickly identify mistakes.
The Makpar team would like to congratulate the IRS in its ongoing digital transformation efforts, which could certainly be a case study for other agencies to replicate.
Contact Makpar here for more information on how we can help support your agency’s CX journey.