Protecting America’s Consumers
Millions of Americans contact the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) every year to report complaints about everything from fraud and identity theft to deceptive advertising, and to register their telephone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry. But several years ago, the FTC saw a challenge on the horizon.
With consumers increasingly using mobile devices to connect with the world, would the traditional channels for contacting the FTC fall out of favor and make it more difficult for the agency to meet consumers’ expectations for fast, effective and easy-to-use access
to its services?
The answer is now clear that, yes, mobile connectivity is changing consumers’ communication habits and preferences, but thanks to
the foresight of the FTC, the agency has stayed in step with the
citizens it serves.
In early 2014, the FTC engaged Leidos to develop and launch a mobile web access capability that has quickly become another effective channel with the public to contact the FTC and report consumer complaints. Providing anytime, anywhere, any device connectivity, the mobile service is handling more than a third of contacts from consumers adding their telephone numbers to the National Do Not Call Registry and close to one fifth of fraud complaints. In addition, serving citizens across all channels including mobile has contributed to the FTC’s greater than 80 percent customer satisfaction score.
The mobile assistant enables consumers to access nearly all of the capabilities on the FTC’s Complaint Assistant and Do Not Call Registry websites, developed and supported by Leidos. Rather than creating an app for a multitude of devices — and incurring all of the development and maintenance costs associated with that approach —the team opted for a responsive design version of the existing web applications optimized for different mobile web browser access.
In addition to being more cost-effective, the mobile assistant enables the FTC to leverage the security features of the sites and provide users with confidence that their data is protected.
Mobile capability is one of many examples of how Leidos is meeting the FTC’s contractual requirements that we develop continuous improvements to the services provided to consumers. For example, with the FTC’s approval, the Leidos team has migrated FTC data and system operations to a cloud-based architecture using Amazon Web Services, providing not only highly secure system operations but also seamless automated failover between geographically separated data centers to prevent service disruptions to end-users.
Experience the mobile version of the FTC Complaint Assistant by going to www.FTC.gov/complaint on your mobile device.
