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GSA SmartPay® | User Types
Jessica Marine edited this page Mar 7, 2023
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Last updated: October 21, 2022
CCCM focuses on providing exceptional customer service; preventing waste, fraud, and abuse; and finding ways for agencies to optimize rebates. This is accomplished in many ways – interpreting new policies and laws and disseminating information to customers; keeping up-to-date on state tax exemption statuses; analyzing data, trends, and anomalies and sharing findings; sharing best practices; and training customers.
Website
- Provide good customer support; provide needed information in as few clicks as possible.
- "
Instantly informative."
- "
- Keep content up-to-date and engaging.
- More intuitive content navigation.
- Single stop for all-things-card.
- Make it easy for card holders to know if something is 889 compliant.
“[with the current tool] you need to know stuff most card holders won’t know. They want to make a purchase and get on with work.”
Online training
- Website that operates smoothly, consistently.
- Modernize the training and make it more interactive. It’s currently only text / slide-based.
- Recognizes that people prefer to learn in different ways – would like the ability to add audio and videos.
- Ability to drill in on reporting by bureau, not just agency.
- Make the website secure without over-burdening users (multi-factor authentication).
- Optimize for mobile devices, compatible now but not well.
Website
- Search – it’s hard to find content; typical keywords sometimes don’t work. It’s hard to find where to search on the website.
- Outdated content – can become stale quickly.
- Style inconsistency – font, color, size, headings differ.
- Keeping the site current with all state’s tax exemption statuses.
- No ability to scan site to identify broken links.
- No ability for users to give regular feedback on the website.
Online training
- Password resets – many issues currently:
- Agency security protocols are preventing password reset emails from being delivered to users, sentiment is only about 70% of emails are delivered.
- CCCM is manually assisting users with password resets today, notionally about 10 - 20 per day, which is distracting from other work assignments.
- MFA – GSA’s CISO requires MFA for log-in to GSA systems. SmartPay intends to move to MFA in the near-term. Many fears on the impact to user experience:
- Agency security protocols blocking code delivery via email (and uncertainty if this delivery method is allowable via NIST standards).
- Many users do not have government-issued phones for text delivery.
- Users that are in secure compartmentalized information facilities where cell-phones / text delivery capabilities are not allowed can not receive the code.
- System performance and memory issues, “timeouts are not unusual.” Content times out in the middle of a quiz and customers complain. There may be server capacity issues.
- Agency-level only reporting – in large agencies, this creates challenges for A/OPCs who have difficulty parsing their user segment in the data.
- User profile self-service – users can not change their name, update their email address, or merge accounts. They must contact CCCM to help with these actions.
Website
- Assigned to work the email box or call line and answer agency / organization questions – users often ask for tax info, Master Contract, presentations from previous forums, and information found in GSA SmartBulletins. CCCM responds to the email and points them to the correct info. Often this includes going to the “common questions” pages and copy/pasting correct responses into email and sending to users.
- Note: some questions can not be answered by CCCM since each agency’s policies are a little different. In those scenarios the user needs to be referred back to their agency POC.
- Assigned to work the email box or call line and answer vendor/ business questions – often mechanic shops trying to receive payment for services, hotels asking for which type of tax exemption forms they should be receiving, or small businesses asking how to accept the card.
- Researching something in the Master Contract.
- Updating SmartPay statistics monthly.
- A/OPCs have a question about policy, best practices, or contract changes and CCCM links to the appropriate page.
- User wants to register for SmartPay forum and CCCM directs them to the website.
Online training
- Working the SmartPay inbox or call line – someone emails and says “user needs to take X training” and directs them to the correct link.
- Password resets – login as admin, reset password, test to make sure it works, email user new password and instructions for resetting password. Very time consuming and disruptive to work.
- Updating user information – users can’t update their email address or organization, so admins must do that for them.
- Helping agencies pull reports.
A/OPCs are expert charge card managers. All A/OPCs are focused on ensuring that their card / account holders are trained and aware of best practices and ensuring waste, fraud, and abuse are prevented.
- Level 1 A/OPCs work at a more macro-level in an agency, they are tracking and reporting data / trends to leadership, trying to find ways to maximize the number of transactions on the card to increase rebates, navigating concerns or questions with the brands or banks, coordinating IG/GAO audits, working on agency policy, and training / providing best practices to Level 2 A/OPCs.
- Level 2 A/OPCs oversee a segment of card / account holders – in some agencies this is done via card type (purchase, travel) and in other agencies it’s done by organizational or regional boundaries. They are regularly reviewing transactions for waste, fraud, and abuse; are reviewing new card applications and approving them; are ensuring card / account holders have their initial and refresher training up-to-date; doing maintenance on accounts (i.e. name, address, or phone number changes); and are answering day-to-day questions from card / account holders.
Training
Some agencies rely on GSA for the initial and refresher training because it’s less burdensome on the agency and there is no maintenance – they rely on GSA to keep the training content current and up-to-date with changes.
Other agencies prefer to host their own training. The rationale for this is there are agency-specific policies or special authorities that are not covered in GSA’s training, they can automate reminder emails to users, and certificate tracking is built-in and less burdensome for A/OPCs to monitor and track.
Website
- Find tax information.
- Review policy guidance / SmartBulletins.
- Don’t change the website too much – it will require retraining users within an agency.
- Trusts GSA to keep content up-to-date and accessible.
Online training
- Direct card / account holders and approving officials to initial and refresher training and receive their certificates after they’ve completed the training.
- Take A/OPC class and download certificate.
Website
- Agencies rely on the banks for their data; GSA-provided spend and transaction numbers shouldn’t be highlighted on the website over SmartTax and SmartBulletins.
“It’s the whole shebang for GSA but it’s not what we’re going to the site for.”“Almost none of [the data] comes from SmartPay, much easier to get it from the source - the banks - annual transactions, annual spend, number of cardholders, spend by agency bureau, rebate information.”
- No one reported using the savings calculator.
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889 page is too verbose, no one that we spoke to reported using this tool.
“It’s cumbersome.”
- Too much white space on some of the pages (pages with the right navigation, such as purchase card holder page).
- Too much scrolling.
- Too many clicks to get to tax information - several users suggested the link to the map be put on the top navigation bar.
- Users can’t find the search.
“There is a search? I don’t even know if I believe you that there is a search. Oh, okay. I usually look for a search bar.”
- On the homepage, if you click on the card icons, users expect that it would take you to more information about those products.
- SmartTax site is convoluted on whether it’s for travel, purchase, or both.
- Best practices sites (example) are long lists of text and users did not find them very useful – users were hoping for some really exciting best practices, more in line with what is covered at the Training Forum.
“To me, it’s just really general.”
- Interact links were confusing [we’re unclear if there is still an active community?].
- Information for purchase card holders is scattered.
“Having the resources for purchase card holders would be a great thing – so many requirements of them. Having those resources easy and readily available would be great.”“Our card holders are biologists or accountants, not focused on purchase card, but part of their duties. They’re bombarded with requirements...it gets confusing for them.”
Online training
- Receiving hundreds of emails with training certificates and manually checking them off a list.
“That is a pain in the rumpus. Did you meet training requirements? Who is left?”
- Can’t pull reports below the department level. Users are entering their personal email address so even when an agency has a bureau-specific email address they’re missing people. Challenging for IG audits and administering the program.
[Having more granular reporting] “That would be a giant leap for mankind.”
- Password – remembering the passwords; having to call or email someone at GSA for password resets.
“Not in here often enough to remember the password.”“Makes it time-consuming and challenging for [card holders] to share their certificates.”
- Log-in / create an account should be emphasized. Don’t let people take classes without logging in. Users can access the training from the homepage and go through the content but since they didn’t log-in they don’t get a certificate, and they have to be directed to create an account and do the training again.
“You have to do it again honey, because you didn’t log-in.”
- Some language is confusing or acronyms are not spelled out:
- “Account holder” language is confusing - most agencies still call them “card holder”.
- AO is not spelled out.
- A/OPC is not spelled out.
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508 page (page 2) in the purchase card training is confusing users and they’re reaching back to A/OPCs to confirm they’re taking the right training.
‘Always stuck here. “Is this the actual training, I see something about 508?” “Yeah that’s the training.”’
Website
- Direct travelers to the tax map.
“That thing is a thing of beauty.”
- Merchant says that a purchase is not tax exempt, A/OPC goes to the website and copies information from the tax map to share with the merchant.
- Sharing SmartBulletins with others at their agency to overcome misconceptions or keep them up-to-speed with changes; the fact that it’s written by CCCM, “the people who run the program,” make it very trustworthy.
- Reviewing previous training forum materials to answer questions.
“Digging in the weeds for answers”
- Sending people to the homepage to see the colors of the various cards.
‘When someone reaches out, “why is this being declined?” First thing we can ask is “what color?” before looking up anything else - can say, “well that’s the wrong card”’
Online training
- Take A/OPC class and download certificate.
- Making sure card / account holders do the required trainings by pointing them to the GSA site.
- Downloading a copy of the A/OPC training materials and saving it to their computer so they can search that document later.
[Forthcoming; need more user research]
[Forthcoming; need more user research]