This authoritative guide shares the true best practices for delivering services in the public sector as identified by a select group of experienced government service managers representing all lines of business. They have applied their hundreds of years of collective experience as both service managers and citizen customers to provide you a practical and comprehensive model for effective service delivery across telephone, email, postal mail, facsimile, walk-in, and web channels. The result is an unprecedented strategic map for service evolution as well as an indispensable guide for resource prioritization when dealing with fiscal realities. Government Customer Service Standards is dedicated to all the people who answered the call and came together to create something we all believed in so strongly that we worked by consensus. Their collective vast understanding of contact services in the public sector has given this body of knowledge the intrinsic viability, credibility, and usability befitting an open standard for government services. I thank them on behalf of government service managers and citizens everywhere for making time beyond their regular duties to make a difference in government.