How Did We Help You? LMI Customer Service in 2008

by Oriane Casale- oriane.casale@state.mn.us
February 2009

The mission of the Labor Market Information (LMI) Office of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) is to deliver high-quality labor market information to support Minnesota’s businesses, its workforce and economic development system, and the workforce of today and tomorrow. We strive to meet our mission by collecting, analyzing and disseminating economic data on Minnesota’s business community, workforce and job market. We also provide key economic indictors, employment projections, and regional and statewide industry and workforce analysis as well as information to help individuals make informed career decisions. Access to high-quality, up-to-date labor market information is particularly important for policy makers, education planners and job seekers during an economic downturn like the one we are currently experiencing.

Each year we summarize information on our customers including who you are, the type of information you have asked for in the past year, and your satisfaction level with our information and services. This process helps us improve the information and services we provide, and we hope that our summary is informative for you as well.

Additionally, we want to update you on new and improved products and services that we provided during the past year. You will find all of this information summarized for 2008 in this feature article.

We obtain information on our customers from several sources:

• Your telephone, in-person and e-mail requests
• Web statistics from our WebTrends tracking tool
• Information from our mailing and e-mail lists
• Customer satisfaction information from DEED’s customer satisfaction telephone survey

LMI Customers and Information Delivery Methods

The LMI Office offers a number of delivery methods for LMI data and information.

• LMI Web site : The vast majority of our customers access information directly from our Web site (www.PositivelyMinnesota.com/lmi). We keep our Web site as up to date and complete as possible so that customers know that they are getting the most current labor market information available for Minnesota. Essentially all releasable data and information that we produce is available on our site.

We also provide direct information delivery services including analyst services, e-mailed newsletters and direct mailings of publications.

• Analyst Services : Our telephone (651-259-7384 or 888-234-1114 or TTY 800-657-3973) and e-mail (deed.lmi@state.mn.us) Helpline service help customers find and understand LMI data and information by providing access to analysts. These men and women also provide LMI presentations to a wide range of audiences as well as training sessions primarily geared for workforce and economic development professionals. Consultation services and data extraction and analysis are also available on a fee-for-service basis.
  
  
• Newsletter Notification : We have two e-mail self-subscription lists. Subscribers to the LMI Data and Publications list receive a brief monthly newsletter with Web links to available data and information. Subscribers to the LMI Releases for News Media also receive a monthly notice with employment and unemployment rate updates. This media release also serves as notification of the monthly press release for many members of the media.
  
  
• Direct Mailing List : This list is for customers who want to receive publications and brochures that are available in print. Table 1 provides a snapshot of the number of customer contacts we made in each category. Overall, the LMI Office had more than 1,347,000 customers and made more than 1,743,000 contacts with these customers in 2008. The vast majority of these were Web customers, while a significant minority received LMI services through other means.

We tracked detailed information on the 4,800 customers who were in touch with us in 2008 by telephone either to request information through the LMI Helpline or a regional analyst or to request a publication. One important piece of information that we track through this method is the type of work our customers do. This helps us understand our customers’ needs so that we can better shape our information-production efforts. Table 2 shows that, based on this source of information, our top four customer groups are private businesses; DEED staff, including those at WorkForce Centers; members of the general public who don’t fit into any specific category that we track; and schools, colleges and universities.

Labor Market Information
As readers of the Minnesota Employment Review know, the LMI Office produces a range of data and informational products monthly, quarterly and annually. These products include industry and occupational employment and wage data, unemployment data, job openings data, long-term employment projections and short-term employment forecasts, and analysis on a wide range of labor market topics. This section addresses the types of informational products our customers accessed in 2008.

The top DEED LMI Web pages in 2008 by number of visits are the LMI Data Tools page, the Employment Outlook Tool, which includes short-term forecasts as well as long-term employment projections, and the Salary Survey Data Tool. Table 3 summarizes this information.

Over the past five years we have moved away from providing print publications to providing our range of products via the Internet. The main reason for this is cost, but this approach also improves timeliness because data and analysis can be made available on our Web site almost instantly upon completion. However, because we know that many of our customers want to be able to manipulate the data or print out articles to read at their leisure, we also make all material available for download, either in Excel tables if it is purely data, or in PDF format if it involves reading lengthy text. Evidence suggests that our customers value this download option with over 60,000 downloads in 2008. Table 4 provides a list of the top 10 products that our customers downloaded from DEED’s LMI Web pages. Table 5 summarizes the type of information our employer customers used based on responses to the DEED Customer Satisfaction Survey. Of the 218 employer respondents who used LMI products, almost 80 percent used the salary survey.

From the Customer Satisfaction Survey we also obtain a picture of how our largest customer group, employers, access LMI. The majority of the 216 respondents obtained LMI via the Internet, although a variety of other methods were used as shown in Figure 1.

LMI Customer Satisfaction
Each year we look closely at the customer satisfaction results from DEED’s Customer Satisfaction Survey. This year over 350 respondents gave feedback on LMI. Figures 2 and 3 summarize the responses from customers in 2008 on LMI satisfaction.

These results demonstrate that almost 93 percent of LMI customers are either satisfied or very satisfied with LMI products and services. For those customers who were not satisfied or very unsatisfied, it is difficult to determine what changes would be necessary to meet their needs, in part because the group is small and in part because little other information exists on these customers.

Continuous Improvement
We spent part of 2008 building new Web tools. Our customers have told us that they don’t need access to each individual data set. Instead they need data sets to answer specific questions. Occupations in Demand (OID) came out of this. This product pulls together what we know about the current demand for each occupation and presents this information by region. It also links to educational programs and occupational descriptions for career seekers. We feel that this tool is especially important during this period of worker dislocation. You can find the searchable table for your region at www.PositivelyMinnesota.com/lmi/tools/oid/default.aspx

We have been working on expanding the M3D mapping tool from seven-county-metropolitan-area coverage to statewide coverage. This upgrade should be available live on the Web by the time this article is published or shortly thereafter at http://map.deed.state.mn.us/M3D/

We created a Web tool for the Job Vacancy Survey. This tool allows you better access to the data by providing more detailed data, more historical data and a download option. It also allows us to release the data faster and more efficiently. Check it out at www.PositivelyMinnesota.com/lmi/publications/jobvacancy.htm

We always welcome comments and feedback on our products and services. Go to www.PositivelyMinnesota.com/lmi/contact.htm to find your preferred method of contacting us.

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