Customer experience pervades every aspect of what the government does — and some might argue, why it exists. What’s more, it has become profoundly clear that everyone is a customer. There are the obvious customers, people across the nation. But then there are current and former federal employees, businesses large and small, the government’s contracting community, other agencies and even other nations. Likely, there are more. Unlike a private company, a federal agency often has no competitor for its services. That fact has created a lag in the evolution of federal CX and digital services — relative to what businesses and nongovernment organizations typically provide today and what people now expect. Agencies are on it now though. The presidential executive order on customer experience of December 2021 targets the need to evolve CX and points up the destructive affect that poor service delivery has on public trust. Download the guide to learn how to meet the expectations of the public, as well as the many other customers agencies serve, with a multipronged strategy that focuses on culture, processes and technology.
Want to Enhance Customer Experience? Here’s Where to Start
“The key to the success of Farmers.gov is its simplicity, Bremby said. USDA has put all the information farmers need in a single place and made it easy for them to complete the necessary processes to receive services. USDA consolidated seven digital systems and 150 web resources into one intelligent platform that follows a user’s progress. And that, Bremby noted, is the biggest metric for success in customer experience: Did the customer complete the transaction? Or did they drop off somewhere in the middle of the process, like abandoning a cart while shopping online?”
Read more insights from Rod Bremby, Regional Vice President for Global Public Sector at Salesforce.
Meaningful Communication Creates the Foundation for Good Customer Experience
“Agencies are familiar with traditional communications media. They engage with public relations firms and the news media to promote stories. They conduct public awareness campaigns across every available platform, from bus stop advertisements to social media, and they tend to be pretty good at driving broad awareness. Where they fall short though, Peterson said, is more granular, personalized messaging.”
Read more insights from Angy Peterson, Vice President at Granicus.
How Federal Agencies can Pivot to Experience-driven Government
“People who rely on government services are usually accessing them at critical junctures in their lives, often moments of profound need. They’re looking for relief in the aftermath of a natural disaster, for public health data during an epidemic, for financial stability in retirement, and for ways to prepare for growth or cope with losses affecting their families and businesses. That’s why agencies need to pivot to experience-driven government, meeting citizens where they’re at in their journeys and connecting them with the right services at the right time.”
Read more insights from James Hanson, Head of Industry Strategy for the Public Sector at Adobe.
Don’t Let a Cyber Staff Shortage Weaken Your Defenses
“Federal agencies are taking note and have started making significant strides toward digital transformation, driven in no small part by recent directives, including the president’s executive order on customer experience. While competitive pressures often motivate private sector enterprises to invest in innovation, the government’s greatest competition is usually the status quo. Agencies have been delivering services in the same way for so long that impacting change requires redirecting institutional inertia — to say nothing of overcoming budgetary obstacles. One way for agencies to get started on this journey is to begin digitizing agreements.”
Read more insights from Michael “MJ” Jackson, Vice President and Global Head of Industries at DocuSign.
Here are 3 Phases to Begin Modernizing Customer Experience Right Away
“For years, agencies have been researching, modernizing and overhauling how customers experience doing business with the federal government. Over the course of several presidential administrations, with the help of Office of Management and Budget mandates, presidential executive orders and an influx of customer experience talent, there has been a noticeable shift toward organizational CX management approaches. Agencies have an opportunity to take full advantage of technological advances to improve customer experience management capacity at scale. Advances in cloud technology, data analytics and new communications channels have opened up new avenues to improve an agency’s capability to design and deliver services for both customers and federal employees.”
Read more insights from Matt Chong, Vice President of Federal at Qualtrics.
Download the full Expert Edition for more insights from these customer experience leaders and additional government interviews, historical perspectives and industry research.
“Student needs are so individualized that a single, one-size-fits-all approach to services is ineffective. Institutions need systems that can constantly learn from students as they’re navigating their experience on campus and then take student-specific action. Qualtrics’ experience management platform enables students to share feedback in a host of different ways and then crucially, pairs that data with internal systems to help institutions gain a holistic view of those students. Campus leaders can listen, understand and act through a platform that gathers information and converts it into real-time insights for decision-makers. In addition, the Qualtrics platform uses artificial intelligence to help schools understand what friction points exist in the student journey and then helps to automate actions, such as connecting students with the right resources, at scale. By giving the right people the right information at the right time, AI enables institutions to intervene at the moments that matter most. It also helps decision-makers measure the impact of those actions.”
“If a project is served by a point product, a program needs a platform. And I consider a platform to manage the student experience to be as vital to the higher ed technology stack as the SIS, the LMS, and the CRM. This is the missing link that will drive the metrics you care most about. Getting rigorous at a student-specific level about the experiences each is having is the only way to take actions to make them better — at both a campus level and at an individual level. While the three other systems provide some insight into the student experience via the operational data they generate, they mostly offer lagging indicators. They can tell you that someone hasn’t been in class for three consecutive sessions, isn’t completing assignments, or is in danger of being put on academic probation. But they won’t tell you how the student is feeling. If they’re actually engaged in teaching and learning. If your school doesn’t understand why a student is acting a certain way, it’s not addressing the root problem.”
Are People at the Center of Your Modernization Efforts?
“The resident experience has a number of components. The first is engagement. Experiences should be immersive and intuitive and on par with user experiences in private sector companies. The second element is efficiency. The experience on the backend should be as functional as it is beautiful, meaning it reduces errors, optimizes workflows, automates processes and quickly delivers tangible value for the agency. The third aspect is effectiveness. Agencies must be able to measure and evaluate, almost in real time, how effectively they are engaging users and realizing a return on investment, and then adjust accordingly. The final component is trust. Organizations must demonstrate that they can protect mission-critical workflows and satisfy rigorous government and industry standards.”