Our Customer Service Promise
The State of Maryland pledges to provide constituents, businesses, customers, and stakeholders with services in the following manner:
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Friendly and Courteous: We will be helpful and supportive and have a positive attitude and passion for what we do.
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Timely and Responsive: We will be proactive, take initiative, and will try to anticipate your needs.
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Accurate and Consistent: We will always aim for 100% accuracy, and be consistent in how we interpret and implement State policies and procedures.
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Accessible and Convenient: We will continue to simplify and improve access to information and resources.
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Truthful and Transparent: We will advance a culture of honesty, clarity, and trust.
The mission of the Maryland Department of the Environment is to protect and restore the environment for the health and well-being of all Marylanders.
The Department’s customers include citizens, businesses, local governments, other state and federal agencies, and everyone else with an interest in protecting Maryland’s environment.
Every Department employee is responsible for delivering exceptional service by providing customers with respectful, timely, and knowledgable responses to inquiries and interactions.
The Department of the Environment’s Customer Service Promise describes our approach. Specific goals include the following:
- Improve the tracking, responsiveness, and resolution time of all electronic, telephone, written, and in-person correspondence. For example, we will acknowledge all email inquiries within one business day of receipt.
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Ensure state employees and managers continue to improve customer service skills through formal training classes and informal coaching on best practices in customer service. For example, participants in our Leadership Development Program recently received specialized customer-service training.
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Ensure that standard application processing times are met for at least 90% of permits and other environmental approvals issued each year. Recently 95% of approvals met their target turnaround times.
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Pursue resources that will support expansion of permitting and other services provided online. For example, lead rental registry customers can already apply online, and MDE has identified other types of permits that will be good candidates for online services.
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Update online publications, forms, FAQs, and pertinent information so that citizens and businesses can find relevant information quickly and accurately.
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Use social media to help get the word out about services, events, and news to provide citizens and businesses with information important to them.
- Evaluate and improve services by collecting customer feedback. Check out MDE’s Customer Service Survey.
In addition to these core customer-service-related activities, we will also review our business hours to ensure that they are aligned with customer needs; conduct focus-group-type meetings with stakeholders, ensure literature is up-to-date, and conduct staff meetings to discuss progress on achieving customer service goals. We will also continue to recognize top performers in our agency for professionalism and courtesy, for responsiveness in resolving customer needs, and for innovations that improve customer service.
We will monitor the execution of the aforementioned activities, measure performance, and analyze the results in order to continuously improve customer service.
We are committed to providing Maryland citizens, businesses, stakeholders, and other customers with the best customer service. For more information, visit our website: www.mde.maryland.gov.
» Link to MDE's Customer Experience Survey
