In these tough times, it seems like governments, with the exception of the Federal Government, are being forced to slash and cut their budgets by millions and millions of dollars on a weekly basis. But, you have to ask yourself, how much is too much?  Until the economy turns around, budget cutting is a real fact of life.  The public needs to adjust their expectations of when and how local, county, and state governments will provide the services they have become accustomed to.  You can only cut so far, and then the limb falls off. We have a number of government agencies who utilize our services to monitor the level of services they provide.  Why?  It's not like you can go out and get another government -- but the citizens can elect new leaders if the perception is that they current ones don't give a darn about them.  What many agencies are proving is that they need to rethink how they communicate and provide services based on their secret shopping results. A shopper has no agenda, as most citizens have.  The shopper is only looking to measure key elements of the experience, not give their opinions.  The result is you receive an independent 3rd party assessment of what's going on in the trenches.  Plain and simple, it's the least biased report money can buy! For more information, check out our other blog posts or stop by our other web sites for ServiceQuality.US or The Service Quality Department.