Public-Facing Staff Survey
Why We Asked Public-Facing Staff to Share Their Experience
In October 2025, in partnership with State HR, we invited public-facing staff to participate in a dedicated survey administered alongside the annual Employee Engagement Survey.
We heard from 14,978 public-facing staff across state government, representing approximately 67% of employees who indicated they regularly interact with the public as part of their job. This strong response rate signals that staff were eager to share their experiences.
Public-facing staff are closest to customers. They answer questions, explain complex processes, manage competing requirements, and often absorb stress and uncertainty when customers are confused, frustrated, or worried about outcomes.
This survey was designed to better understand:
- What customers ask most often
- Where staff experience friction in serving the public
- What helps staff deliver good service — and what makes it harder
- How customer experience and staff experience are connected
By listening directly to staff, we aim to translate what we heard into meaningful improvements in policy, process, communication, and support.
Customer experience doesn’t start at the front counter — it starts inside our agencies. How we support staff shapes the experience delivered to residents, businesses, and communities.
How to Read These Results
About the Data and Quotes
The dashboard below summarizes patterns across survey responses.
- Charts reflect aggregated data from thousands of respondents.
- Percentages are rounded and shown to illustrate trends, not rank agencies.
- Open-ended comments were reviewed and grouped into common themes.
- Quotes shown throughout are drawn directly from staff responses and lightly edited only to protect privacy and improve clarity.
The goal of this dashboard is not to highlight isolated stories, but to surface consistent patterns across agencies and roles.
What We’re Hearing
Key Themes Across Responses
Across agencies and types of work, staff consistently described similar experiences:
- Customers most often seek clarity, reassurance, and understanding — especially when timelines or requirements are unclear.
- Staff regularly go above and beyond to help customers navigate complex or confusing systems.
- Emotional labor — managing stress, fear, frustration, or urgency — is a routine part of public-facing work.
- Policies, systems, communication gaps, and workload pressures often require staff to compensate in order to deliver good service.
These themes appear across agency functions and job types, underscoring that customer experience is shaped by both system design and the people working within it.
What Staff Want Leadership — and the Public — to Understand
From their responses, staff emphasized:
- A deep commitment to public service and helping people through difficult moments
- Pride in making a meaningful difference for customers
- The importance of clear, consistent policies and reliable systems
- That training helps — but cannot replace adequate staffing, realistic workloads, and thoughtful process design
- That sustainable customer experience requires sustainable support for the people delivering it
These insights reflect the often unseen effort that makes public service work.
Why This Matters
Public-facing staff are not only implementing policy — they are interpreting it, explaining it, and carrying its human impact every day.
Understanding their experience helps agencies:
- Identify where systems rely too heavily on individual effort
- Reduce avoidable friction and repeat contacts
- Strengthen trust through clearer, more predictable processes
- Support the people who make public service possible