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 #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

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
• Contact us page

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 department-of-veterans-affairs/va.gov-team#26770
• Detailed findings from communication audit
• Recommendations from communication audit

• 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