S3E2: How VA Built 80% Trust With Veterans

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) created its Veterans Experience Office (VEO) in 2015 with the goal of integrating a customer experience (CX) approach to veteran care, benefit, and service delivery. Since the office’s launch, VA has measured that veteran trust in the department has grown from 55% to 80%. Because of VEO’s collaboration with VA's administrations, veterans have been able to more easily navigate VA websites, have more streamlined and empathy-driven medical care, and more. Denise Kitts, VEO’s enterprise measurement and design executive director, helped stand up VEO and has been a key player in improving how veterans, their families, and their caregivers interact with VA. She joins us in this episode to learn how CX has transformed the way veterans can get the service they need from VA and the role CX plays in building trust with veterans. 

Denise Kitts is the VA VEO executive director of Enterprise Measurement and Design. She rejoined VEO in 2022 after helping establish the office in 2015. She is responsible for the VA Qualitative and Quantitative Data Strategy and for deploying VA’s Trust Survey, along with other operational and program-level surveys. She was chief data technology officer for the chief technology officer prior to rejoining VEO. 

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Transcript

Melissa Sosinski: Have you ever tried to access a government service—you know, looking for the right web page, phone number, way to access that benefit, person to reach to get help? I bet there’s been a time when you didn’t know where to look or how you know you qualify for a benefit.

Well, what if I told you that government agencies have been innovating and iterating on how we can better engage with them? They’re doing this by adopting a customer experience, or a CX approach. For those who don’t know, CX is a customer’s overall experience when interacting with a business, organization—or in this case—a federal agency. 

CX as a federal government-wide initiative is relatively new, with President Biden issuing an executive order to transform the federal customer experience in December 2021. But one of the agencies that has been leading the charge in innovating what federal CX looks like even before the [executive order] is the [U.S.] Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

Realizing that veterans were struggling to access their care, benefits, and services, the VA stood up its Veterans Experience Office in 2015 to first understand why those barriers existed and then streamline how veterans, caregivers, and families interact with the VA. Their cutting-edge CX increased veterans’ trust in the VA from 55% to 80%.

So, what did that CX transformation journey look like, and what impact is it having on veterans’ lives today? 

This is Empathy Affect, Fors Marsh Media’s podcast that explores the human side of government. I’m Melissa Sosinski, and today we’re going to answer those very questions.

Joining us is Denise Kitts, [the Veterans Experience Office’s] VEO Director of Enterprise Measurement and Design. She helped create the VEO and has been working with her team to help the VA deliver life-changing care and benefits to millions of veterans across our country. Dedicating decades of her career to improving how veterans engage with the VA, I can’t think of a better person to break down what government CX looks like in action. 

Denise, thank you so much for joining me on Empathy Affect today. It's a pleasure to have you on the podcast, especially as we welcome the New Year. 

Denise Kitts: I'm excited to be. Here. Thank you for having me.

MS: Of course. So today we're here to talk about the role of the Veteran Experience Office and how it plays a role in improving the way veterans interact with and receive services from the VA. And I understand that you helped establish the VEO in 2015. So, walk me through what that was like—why the VEO was stood up, and what were some of the initial responsibilities the office was tasked to handle?

DK: Thank you. I love that question. So, I would say it was a little bit of a perfect storm back in 2015, where we had the right leadership and a crisis. So never let a good crisis go by is always what they say. The secretary at time was Bob McDonald. Bob was the former CEO of Procter and Gamble. So, Bob had very much a customer experience mindset—understanding the needs of the customers. At the time Bob came in, we were experiencing a little bit of what we call like an access crisis, where veterans were losing trust in VA, and we really needed to kind of unpack that and try to understand what they were thinking and feeling and where the pain points were when they were interacting with VA and kind of day in the life of a veteran. 

Bob McDonald[SM1] : “There’s an immense, immense laser-like focus on the customer—every single customer.”

MS: That was Bob McDonald in 2014 sharing how the customer is the North Star for Procter and Gamble. Take a moment to hear how that customer-centric focus works in the context of the VA.

BM: “We like to say that the consumer is boss. That’s who we serve. Well, the analogy is very clear here at Veterans Affairs. Our boss is the veteran. Our customer is the veteran. We should look at everything we do through the lens of that veteran and make sure that we’re doing everything we can to help that veteran and do nothing more. In other words, strip out all the unnecessary work that we’re doing that doesn’t focus on helping the veteran.” 

MS: To understand where the VA was falling short in helping veterans, one of the VEO’s first tasks was to create a journey map, understanding what the veteran experience was like from the moment they discharged from the Military.

DK: It was the first time ever that somebody that actually plotted out the journey of a veteran from the time they get out of the Military and all the services that they interact with while using VA services and the pain points and the bright spots, and that was illuminating, because nobody had ever really understood it—beginning to end—because we deliver services in a very, in a fairly siloed manner. So, I think that you know the very first thing for the office was having that journey map and understanding and doing the research and understanding the moments that mattered in the journey and what were the pain points and unpacking [SM2] those pain points.

That’s where we started. So, it was really listening to the veterans and understanding how they were thinking and why we were losing trust, and then from there we took off with [an] action planning. 

MS: Nice. Part of what you do now at the VA is help conduct the VA Trust Survey, which measures [the] trust veterans have in the VA. We'll get to some of those trust rates in a second, but can you explain how the survey is conducted and what exactly you try to capture when you're measuring trust? 

DK: So, the Veterans Trust Survey was our very first survey back in 2016. As I mentioned earlier, you know, when we started the office, it was listening to the veteran and getting their voice, so the Trust Survey was the very first thing that we deployed back in 2016. And it was kind of interesting how we settled on trust because when we went out, we benchmarked with industry around how they did customer experience. What a lot of industry looks at Net Promoter Score for kind of their true north beacon metric, which didn't really work for the government, so we had to develop like what would be a true north beacon metric for us, which was trust. 

And if you unpack trust, it really came down to ease—Is it easy to interact with you to get the services I need? Effectiveness—Did I get the services I need? And emotion—Did I feel valued in the interaction? 

So, trust became our kind of North Star beacon for that survey. The questions in that initial survey were really around ease, effectiveness, and emotion. The survey's done quarterly. We do a sampling and a quarantine. We use people that have in the last month have used a service. Maybe they applied for [a] benefit, received a benefit or had a health care interaction. We use that the people that have used the services in the last month, they kind of go into the sampling for the survey. 

MS: Yeah. So, veterans are trusting in the VA more now than in recent years. And while trust is high now with over 80% of veterans using VA services reporting that they trust the VA as of this year, it wasn't always this high. So, when you helped establish the VEO, or even in your years before in your journey with the VA, what were some of the biggest gaps in trust between the VA and our nation's veterans? 

DK: Yeah, great question. So, I mentioned earlier that the trust survey was the first one that we went out with in 2016. The initial trust scores in 2016 were hovering around 55%. So, we really need to unpack that and try to understand why veterans, almost majority or almost half, weren't really trusting the VA. So, I think that, you know the originally the biggest gap for our office was you know again kind of understanding what the veterans were experiencing and hearing it directly from them. 

So, we kicked off a lot of qualitative research with veterans to try to unpack that and understand the moments that matter again and kind of the pain points. And kind of will be heard back in 2015[SM3] . There were a couple of things: At the time, it was really difficult to get appointments. So, on the health care side, the veterans were telling us like well the care is good, I can't get in. It's really difficult to get an appointment. 

On the benefits side, we were hearing a lot about long delays with disability claims, lack of transparency, and trying to understand where they were in the process. And then I think overall in terms of how veterans were experiencing VA, they were, one very fragmented in terms of like how we deliver the services within VA. And the other thing we heard really loud and clear was that [it was] very confusing, really hard to navigate. We had lots of different websites. We had thousands of phone numbers just trying to understand how to engage with VA and to understand like what benefits you were eligible for and how to obtain those benefits was just extremely confusing, and so I think those were like the biggest gaps that we heard initially.

MS: Definitely. I know that the VEO is sort of in a unique position in that it doesn't do service delivery, but you work with the different components. So, what is your office's role in the trust-building, and what is it like to work with the different components of the VA, like the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) or Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) to make sure that the services they're providing are effective and meet our veteran's needs?

DK: People are always asking me like, “Well, if you're not in the business of the service delivery, then how are you impacting the service delivery?” And so, it's really through those strong partnerships with you know like as you said with VBA and VHA, and I think that because we aren't in the business of delivering services, our job is to really to be the voice of the veteran and advocate for the voice of the veteran, caregivers, and survivors. Primarily our role is to kind of democratize the insights that we have, and we have over 170 surveys. We've got 40 to 50 sets of qualitative research. And so, our job is to really kind of democratizing that information and putting it in the hands of the people that are actually delivering the services and making decisions around how to deliver those services.

So, I think that's a big part. A big part of our job in terms of like making sure people are solving the right problems. Sometimes at headquarters, we could get a little bit kind of removed from you the actual like boots on the ground, the people that are in the field, and the people that are actually delivering the services. So, I think the insights that we get from both the qualitative and the quantitative research that we share out with the people delivering the services help make sure that the people that are making those decisions are really solving the right problem. 

And then the other part of it is when we do have the insights, and we understand some of the pain points. We co-create and reiterate on design concepts about how to do the improvements. I think that's the other role that our office brings to the administrations. So, we help them ensure that they've got the veteran at the center of what they're solutioning. And so, we help them with designing solutions and products. 

MS: Yeah, that's great. I love how you framed it as being an advocate for veterans. I think that's a really good way of framing it. I'm wondering, down at that boots-on-the-ground level that you were mentioning, can you share a story about what improved veteran experience actually looks like for veterans and their families and caregivers? 

DK: Yeah, wow. OK. Got some great ones. But I think in terms of like boots on the ground, this is kind of like how the data we have kind of comes together with like what people are doing in terms of like boots on the ground. So, like one example is from VH at a Medical Center where we used VSignals—and VSignals is our measurement platform where we do surveys. We used that to identify a pain point with the pharmacy department. So by looking at the trust scores and the free text comments, we found that veterans weren't able to easily get updates on their prescription information to include like wait times, delivery options, customer service channels, so to address this, we teamed up with the Pittsburgh office and the pharmacy office, and we developed infographics and other communication tools to help veterans gain better access to pharmacy staff and get the information that they needed about their prescriptions. 

MS: That's great. 

DK: Yeah. And then after we did the intervention, we continued to measure. Around, you know that that event and after those interactions and putting those new tools in place like that, trust definitely I think it went up about 20 [percentage] points around pharmacy. 

Another one too, which is a little bit kind of zooming out a little bit, I mentioned earlier that engaging with VA is often frustrating and complicated with the number of websites that we had and contact centers and too many phone numbers, so kind of backing up a little bit, the VEO recognized this, you know through all the data that we were getting back from our veterans. But at the time, you can imagine the administrations were very reluctant to give up their individual websites because everybody kind of thought theirs was the best right sort of thing, and this went on for years, but we kept talking about the fact that, look, we really need to have a single front door for veterans to interact with, but everybody wanted to be the front door. Nobody. Nobody wanted to give up theirs. 

So, we, the VEO, in order to try to improve that experience, we did qualitative research with our veterans, caregivers, survivors, and it was fascinating. They kind of came back and they're like, “Look, we know you've got all these different websites, but we expect to go to VA.gov and transact and do business.” And at the time, VA.gov was this bureaucratic website that kind of had a picture of the Central Office on the front page, and you couldn't do any transactions, really couldn’t get anything done when you got there. But it was through that research that veterans, in the voice of the veteran, that we were able to bring that data inside the VA and to senior leadership and basically say, “Hey, look, here's what the veterans are telling us. We really need to act on this data.” And it was through the data that enabled us to kind of break down the silos. 

It kicked off this huge digital modernization effort, where we got rid of the multiple websites, you can go to VA.gov. We started with the top 10 things that veterans wanted to do in terms of transacting, and so now, you could do those things and more. [We] also built out a mobile app, which has got, I think like a 4.5 rating, which is really good in industry and even government. So that is just an example of how VEO was able to again bring the voice of the veteran into the decision-makers and really enhance the experience.

MS: Yeah, that's really awesome. I mean, it's easy to call out websites or technology experiences when things aren't going well, but when things are seamless, that's when you know it's functioning. So, it’s great to walk through that journey.

DK: Yeah. The other thing we heard from veterans was that, even though you’re the government, we expect the services to be on par with industry, so if I could do this at my banking app, why can't I check the status of my claim on my, you know app with VA.gov. So, our digital modernization effort is really about being on par or even better with industry, and that's kind of been our driving force with that effort over the last like 6 years. 

MS: Yeah, definitely. And you know, before you rejoined the VEO, you were the Chief Data Technology Officer (CDTO) at the VA. So now that you're coming back, have you seen any emerging technologies or you were mentioning data before, but any use of data analytics or new strategy that you've found [that] have been most impactful for improving the veteran experience. 

DK: God, I love that question. As a former CDTO, it's all about the data. I always tell people like data is a new oil within government. And as I mentioned earlier, our veterans and our customers are really expecting experiences on par with industry. So, if you can unpack that a little bit, it really means like delivering like personalized proactive engagements and you can't do that without data, right? So, I think one of the big things is using data, so veterans don't have to repeat their story. Or don't even have to tell us their story when they're transitioning from the Military, so you know in a prior. [SM4] Maybe 10 years ago in VA when you separated out the Military, and you showed up at VA for services, you had to prove who you were. Did you serve you? How did you serve? And so now with like the seamless interaction with [U.S. Department of Defense] DOD, our partner, you no longer have to, like, prove who you are and where you served. 

And so, you think about increasing trust. I aways use the Amazon example. However you feel about Amazon. OK, but one of the things that they do really well, as you think about their return policy: It's no questions asked, right? I mean, what does that do for trust? Like you don't have to prove like why you're returning the package. And you think about VA. We were asking people to like prove who you are. Two, prove that you're a veteran before we would engage you with services. So now that we stopped doing that. That's like another one of those things that's really increased trust. 

So, data is really important and to your point about analytics, you know we're doing a lot with data. For example, on our VSignals platform we have free-text comments, and veterans are not a shy group. So even though you might be asking them about their appointment that they had in a medical facility, they use that free text box to tell us a lot of things. And so, we get so much rich feedback and really appreciate that. 

But where the technology comes in is that we're using AI [artificial intelligence] and natural language processing (NLP) to go through those text comments. And in a lot of cases, we'll recognize if somebody is potentially at risk, either at risk, like mental health crisis or homelessness crisis. And so, we can refer them to the right people and make sure we do service recovery and outreach directly to the individuals that that's kind of a cool thing, a cool application of AI and NLP. 

And then the other thing we're doing is chatbot. I think everybody's playing with chatbot these days, but we've deployed that on VA.gov. You know, again kind of getting back to ease effectiveness, to make it really easy for veterans to kind of get to the information they need. And I'm sure we're going to do a whole lot more with AI, trustworthy AI, as we move forward.

MS: Definitely. I've been hearing about the whole evolution and adoption in this space. 

DK: You can't go anywhere without hearing about AI. 

MS: Oh yeah. I think that one thing that some people overlook when they receive government services [is] also the people who are helping provide those services. Can you walk me through how the VEO works alongside VA employees to help them enhance the veteran services they're providing?

DK: Oh God, I love this question. VA has extremely dedicated, knowledgeable employees who show up to work every day trying to improve how we deliver services to veterans, caregivers, and Service members. And I think if anybody's been around customer experience, you know that you can't deliver a good customer experience without an excellent employee experience.

So, not only do we use a platform called VSignals to understand the voice of the veteran, we have a platform where we survey employees called ESignals, where we try to understand how employees are thinking and feeling and what their needs are. So again, we need to understand what they need in order to deliver on excellent services. So, do they have the right tools? Are the policies getting in their way? So, understanding the voice of the employee helps us again kind of with those interventions and process improvements, policy improvements, putting better tools in the hands of the employees. 

The other thing we do is we help spread CX best practices we’ve developed over the last couple of years. We have what we call the VA Customer Experience Institute, CXI for short, where we're really trying to create that culture change with employees around how to make sure they kind of own the moment. And own the moment is kind of that on stage event where you kind of interact with the veteran, so whether it's a phone call or a clinical encounter, processing a claim. So, we do a lot in terms of what I would put under the bucket of culture change with like on the moment training, tour duty training, which kind of helps you understand the kind of mindset of the veteran, you know, for people that weren't in the Military. 

So, there's a whole lot we do around culture change, and then with CXI Institute, there's classes that we’re running around human-centered design to make sure that whatever [SM5] to make sure that people that are in the business of innovating and putting solutions in place are really keeping the veteran at [the] center of everything they do in the employee. 

MS: Thanks for walking us through that. I also am thinking about just like the diversity of veterans across our country. There are different ages, genders, races. They live in rural or urban places, meaning that they could have different needs and means of interacting with the VA. Like there could be an older veteran who isn't as tech savvy, for instance. So, some I don't know, maybe technological solutions you mentioned before may not be as useful to a veteran such as that. So how do you identify the best CX solutions for such a diverse veteran population? 

DK: So, all veterans deserve timely access to world-class health care and earned benefits. But to your point, not all veterans are the same. So, everything we do is really about meeting the veterans where they are based on their individual needs. And so unlike [the] industry, where most of [the] industry focuses on kind of a digital-first sort of solution—you try to drive everybody to their website, and reduce calls and contacts with employees—we design solutions that really take into consideration the different modalities that veterans want to interact with us.

We really want to make them where they[SM6] . So, it's not like a digital only; it's a digital first. But not only right[SM7] , so we're not trying to reduce calls to contact centers, right? It’s really about whatever services were delivering, and raising the bar across all the different modalities, so making it really easy to interact regardless of how you want to interact with us. That's first and foremost. 

And then our qualitative and quantitative research helps us understand the pain points across demographics—multiple types of demographics, populations, geographic, all across history. One example of how we've identified CX solutions for older rural veterans specifically is through our telehealth expansion program, which was designed to remove barriers to telehealth access for all veterans. We also discovered through qualitative research and quantitative analysis that internet access, provider comfort, and lack of general informational telehealth [were] preventing a more widespread use of telehealth care services. So, we developed a telehealth playbook to address these issues, which were distributed across multiple provider locations across the country.

In addition, we also [began] expanding a kind of an offshoot of telehealth, this program we called ATLAS, which is called Accessing Telehealth Through Local Area Stations in rural areas. So, what ATLAS does is it provides like a physical site space in a local community where veterans can easily access telehealth services. So, think of it as like this stand-up, pop-up booth in a rural area where you can go, and it's got all the telecommunications and everything you would need in order to access a telehealth appointment with a provider. 

So that's just an example of how we design to [a] specific population in terms of the rural community. 

MS: Yeah, that's really great. I know that before we mentioned that the veteran trust score is high, but it's still not at 100%. I mean I know that’s like, would be amazing to do, but it can be really hard. But what are some of the barriers or reasons why the remaining 20% don’t quite trust in VA services or benefits or whatever else? And what is the VEO doing to deliver more strongly to our veterans to keep moving that needle forward? 

DK: 100%. I love stretch goals. So, I'm not sure I know of any company or industry that's had 100%, but certainly aspirational. That said, though, I do think our National Cemetery Administration is about 98% customer service, which Forrester [SM8] always holds them up as like a flagship. 

MS: Very nice.

Denise: Yeah, very, very nice. But that said, over the last 6 years, we primarily focused on patient experience, but I think in terms of helping us close the gap on that 20%, we're starting to focus on VBA, because we think improving that benefit experience that veterans have will help us with the overarching you know trust scores. Claim benefits, appeals processes [are] like a new area for us and I think that's, you know, again working with VBA to try to unpack that and understand some of the pain points and doing some design interventions we think will help like close the gap. 

We also discovered, I think one of the other things we're doing, and we did a lot of over the last year because of the new legislation of the PACT Act [Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act], we discovered that outreach is an issue. Many veterans are survivors. Families are fully aware of all the services and benefits that they're eligible for. So, we’re starting these broad communication outreach programs to try to find people use different—I use the word “untethered”—but people that aren't currently engaged with us and getting them in the door and getting them in the services that they're eligible for. So, this proactive sort of outreach and finding these people that aren't yet engaged, I think will also kind of help close the 20%.

Also, the over last year, huge emphasis, or last couple of years, well, actually it's been decades, but a real focused effort around transition. There's been a lot of great work done between DOD and VA to really make that transition really seamless. And frankly not everybody that leaves the Military leaves with a great feeling of trust in the government. And so, I think one of our focuses has been reestablishing that relationship as people transition and making sure it's seamless, understanding their needs, whether it could be landing good in the community, food insecurities, housing insecurities, anything like that, just making sure [they] have like soft landings as they transition out.

And then lastly, I mentioned earlier that we really were focused on VHA for the last 6 years. And if you look at the trust scores in the hospitals, I mean we're hovering around 90%. It's just [a] really great news story, and I just can't say enough about, you know, the medical center directors and the people that are delivering care every day. And there's just great trust scores, but there's always—more to your point—getting to 100%.

So, we're doing things like, again kind of looking at like where else can we do improvements and like one of the things that we recognize in the health journey was discharge. So, if anybody's ever, ever been in a been in a hospital, you know that it's a pretty emotional time when you're getting out, you kind of notified your family. You know, the doctors told you you're checking out at 2:00 and you start looking at the clock on the board, you know, kind of waiting until we, you know, we looked at that moment that matters, and we weren't doing it really well, so one of the things that we introduced was innovative, like using virtual reality. 

And using virtual reality, we actually put some of the caregivers in the position of the patient and having them experience kind of a discharge event and then training them around empathy. And it was really moving in terms of like how that patient was feeling around looking at the whiteboard in the room, watching the clock when you said, “Oh, you're getting discharged at 2 o’clock and then watching the time tick by and [then] it's 3:00 and you still haven't heard anything.”

It's just a really, really interesting emotional moment that matters that we've been able to impact. So, we've [been] using virtual reality, you know, and helping the providers with empathy training [at] the sites. There's I think there's like 10 sites now that we've kind of rolled out this sort of thing, and the scores in this particular area increased by 20% in terms of increasing trust. We'll continue to keep digging around things like that. 

MS: Yeah, it's great that you're able to take the feedback and the data to realize these things, that you can apply, design [with] the empathy. It's really holistic, and that's really wonderful. 

Finally, federal agencies beyond the [VA] also deliver services for the American people, and still they may not be as far along as the VA in developing the experience the way citizens and the government interact with and engage with each other. What do you think has been particularly effective in strategy or innovation for the VA in moving its CX needle forward? And what do you think other agencies can adopt to improve their service delivery to the American people? 

DK: I would say if I was another agency, first of all, the experiences delivered at the touch point with a citizen or the customer. I don't believe that you can change the culture without like top-down belief and customer experience. I think first and foremost, if I was at another agency, I would try to advocate for getting that sort of top-down support for CX. So that's kind of from a culture perspective. 

But I think it really boils down to listening to your customer and listening to your employee, and then acting on the data. Like everything that VA does is we put the veteran at the center of everything we do. And what I mean by that is using the data that they provided us in surveys, using the data they provided to us in qualitative research. What are they telling us that needs to be fixed? And then co-designing with veterans. So, if we're going to, like fix something, including them in the process and iterating with them and co-designing with them, and whatever we end up doing actually meets their needs. 

So, I think it's, you know, it's a combination of providing services to the citizen, make it easy, digital first but not digital only, and then listen and act. So, if you're going to ask for feedback, make sure you can action plan off of it. It's just really critical. 

MS: Yeah, great points, and thank you so much for sharing about your journey with the VA. I still am thinking about how you're saying that you're an advocate for the veteran. I think that's just like such a fabulous way of thinking about your office and the role you play. And I know that the work that goes into making a customer experience smooth is often invisible, so it was really good to get a look behind the scenes to see what you're doing to just help various aspects of the VA deliver better for veterans. 

DK: I appreciate the opportunity to come in today. I personally think that we've got like the best job in government and so love having the opportunity to talk about it, so thank you.

MS: Thank you, Denise. It’s a great moment to pause and have gratitude for the very intentional, data-driven, and human-centered work that leaders like Denise, her colleagues at VEO, and the federal CX community have been pouring into the way our government delivers services to the American people. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the VEO, the latest veteran trust scores, and what’s next in federal CX, check out the show notes for more information.

I hope the New Year is treating you well, and thank you for taking a moment of it to join me on Empathy Affect. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to subscribe, follow, and share the show with a friend. And don’t forget to rate us on your podcast app of choice. Stay warm and well, and I hope you’ll join me next time. Thanks y’all!

 [SM1]Was this a recording? Or was Bob McDonald interviewed  too? You can note a recording in brackets after his name.

 [SM2]Should this say, “unpacking”?

 [SM3]This isn’t really making sense to me. Is something missing?

 [SM4]Not sure how this phrasing was said in the dialogue, but it seems clunky here. Can it be removed?

 [SM5]Double-check this phrasing. It doesn’t make sense here. 

 [SM6]Should this say, “meet them where they are”?

 [SM7]Does this need more context? I’m not sure if the phrasing works here.

 [SM8]Could you add some context here with brackets? Who is Forrester?