Improve VAMC Contact us page experience

[mmiddaugh]

Problem(s) to be solved

• It is difficult for Veterans to find and trust the contact information they seek on VAMC Contact pages.**
  • 5/16/23 Briefing on Foresee data indicated Veterans want accurate and complete information, particularly related to facility and/or individual contact information and phone numbers
  • Medallia feedback consistently includes frustration related to phone numbers - can't find them, no one answers them, long hold times, etc.
  • Gulf Coast VAMC Contact us page had one of the 5 lowest experience ratings across all of VA.gov (1.6) in 2023 (DOMO)
  • Veterans repeatedly report they want department extension numbers and cannot find them
• Creating the contact us page is not intuitive for editors. See Contact Us accordions are not contained within the same group #12087
• Audit for placeholder content (12/22/23) found 67 systems with "Coming soon" still present on the Contact us pages
  • This info was sent to VHA DM for remediation
• Veterans look for mailing addresses

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This effort should consider all the places where contact information is displayed

• Location and contact information on facility page, such as Pittsburgh VA Medical Center-University Drive
• Inside service accordions on facility level pages, such as Pittsburgh VA Medical Center-University Drive
• Locations section on the main system page (at least for the main locations - usually 1 or 2 per system), such as Pittsburgh health care
• Locations page
• Required health service pages - with named care coordinator numbers, at a minimum
  • Women Veteran care
  • Mental health care
  • Suicide prevention
  • Caregiver support
  • Homeless Veteran care
  • LGBTQ+ Veteran care
  • Minority Veteran care
  • Patient advocates
  • Returning service member care
• Contact us page
• plus ways to get centralized phone numbers, i.e.
  • main VA.gov Contact us page
  • Helpful VA phone numbers on R&S
  • Connect to VA care

Questions

• How can we improve the Veteran experience?
  • What contact information is most critical/useful?
  • How might we improve usability and findability for Veterans?
  • How can we make labels more meaningful?
  • Ensure consistency across the Veteran experience?
• How might we improve the editor experience?
  • convert some content into national/standardized
  • make some content reusable
  • automate parts of directory?
  • reduce the risk of introducing errors
  • improve data completeness
  • enhance the editorial experience and make it more efficient
  • monitor/prevent/limit the use of "Coming soon" placeholder text?

Other relevant documentation

• Product Outline
• VAMC options for Veterans to communicate with the VA VAMC options for Veterans to communicate with the VA va.gov-team#26770
• Detailed findings from communication audit
• Recommendations from communication audit
• Display of Location and Contact information for national services within health services accordions #13822 Display of Location and Contact information for national services within health services accordions
• SPIKE: CMS: Phone number validation and guidance#15691

[mmiddaugh]

Note to remember to incorporate Leyda's findings about the number of methods to communicate with VHA/labels, etc when we harden this page

[mmiddaugh]

Related:
VAMC system "Contact Us" page content type and governance department-of-veterans-affairs/va.gov-team#3045
Contact Us accordions are not contained within the same group department-of-veterans-affairs/va.gov-team#12087
VAMC Detail Page: Contact Us: Accordions render even if empty department-of-veterans-affairs/va.gov-team#13076

[mmiddaugh]

For context:
Contact us pages were viewed 1,207,386 times between Jan 1- May 18, 2023. (504,954 unique views)
System level health service pages received 1,238,243 pageviews (439,545 unique views) during the same period

[mmiddaugh]

YTD Medallia feedback scores

Assessment	Overall score	VA.gov Experience	VA.gov Understanding	General VA trust	Trust in VA's commitment to Veterans	Ease of understanding
VAMC pages	3.3	3.2	3.6	3.0	3.4	3.4
Contact us pages	2.8	2.4	3.1	2.4	3.0	2.9