Veteran Trust in VA

Asking Veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors directly about their experiences with VA empowers VA's public servants to provide better access to needed resources.

In the Code of Federal Regulations, VA has established customer experience principles.

VA will provide the best customer experience in its delivery of care, benefits, and memorial services to Veterans, servicemembers, their families, caregivers, and survivors. The delivery of exceptional customer experience is the responsibility of all VA employees and will be guided by VA's Core Values and Characteristics.

Customer experience is the product of interactions between an organization and a customer over the duration of their relationship. VA measures these interactions through Ease, Effectiveness, and Emotion, all of which impact the overall trust the customer has in the organization.

(a) Ease. VA will make access to VA care, benefits, and memorial services smooth and easy.

(b) Effectiveness. VA will deliver care, benefits, and memorial services to the customer's satisfaction.

(c) Emotion. VA will deliver care, benefits, and memorial services in a manner that makes customers feel honored and valued in their interactions with VA. VA will use customer experience data and insights in strategy development and decision-making to ensure that the voice of veterans, servicemembers, their families, caregivers, and survivors inform how VA delivers care, benefits, and memorial services.

VA measures customer experience and trust through the ease, effectiveness, and emotion we demonstrate in the delivery of our care, benefits, and services. Surveys are sent to VA customers through VA's Veterans Signals customer feedback program periodically and after interactions with VA.

The VA-wide trust score is compiled by surveying approximately 257K randomly selected Veterans with recent interactions with VA products and services. The trust survey is measured on a 5-point Likert scale. The data reported is the percentage of Veterans responding to the following questions with a 4-Agree or 5-Strongly agree to the following questions:

• Trust: “I trust VA to fulfill our country’s commitment to Veterans.”
• Ease: “It was easy to get the care or service I needed.”
• Effectiveness: “I got the care or service I needed.”
• Emotion: “I felt like a valued customer."

In April 2016, the Veterans Experience Office (VEO) launched Veterans Signals (VSignals), the survey platform used to measure trust in VA. The VSignals platform is also utilized to report to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) A-11 Circular. The OMB A-11 Circular identifies customer experience domains as ease and simplicity, efficiency and speed, employee helpfulness, equity and transparency, satisfaction, and confidence and trust.

VA leadership and public servants at each facility have access to VSignals customer feedback. For example, if you respond to a survey with a compliment for the nurses at Tampa VA Charlie Clinic, the hospital leadership team will know they are doing a great job. The same goes for opportunities to improve, leadership teams have real-time access to your feedback in order to make quick adjustments if needed.