Modernizing the NASS Customer Experience: Findings from Virtual Focus Groups on the Respondent Portal Dashboard

The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) conducts hundreds of surveys annually, producing numerous reports and data from the completed responses. However, response rates have declined in recent years, a trend that is happening across all survey research organizations. The reasons for declining response rates vary, but there are a number of actions organizations can take to mitigate nonresponse. One way to do this is to increase customer satisfaction and engagement with your organization. As a result, NASS is seeking to better serve its customer base by building a new customer-centric web dashboard that will function as a “one stop shop” for farmers that serves important business needs, such as gathering and reporting crucial information. This report details the findings from focus groups, conducted with NASS’s target population on the concept of the dashboard and prototypes of its design. The results of the focus groups highlight both broad and specific actions NASS can take to improve and modernize the customer relationship with regard to the dashboard and among the agricultural population overall.