Most local governments are now digitally-enabled, however public services continually come under pressure to save costs. At the same time people’s expectations of service quality have risen as they compare public services with the experiences they have in the private sector. Providing a smooth path to buying, managing and delivery of services is the key to customers seeing the value in the products they are consuming.
So how do we streamline processes, and at the same time rebuild trust, and restart conversations with disengaged citizens?
Shifting focus from citizens to customers
Effectiveness will be achievable when councils realise it’s not about building a new website; it’s about creating new services that people want to engage with. That requires re-organisation, with new ways of working and a new culture, as much as it requires great user journeys. Experience design helps shift a councils mindset from being not only a service provider, but also a business that is entitled to create revenue from it’s services.
A successful experience strategy requires concerted efforts across departments, to understand a citizens’ digital behaviour and their needs at different stages.The key is giving internal teams the resources and tools to capture business goals, identify audiences, and write user stories. They can then map out each service offering, enabling them to design new service pages quickly and easily and with minimal technical expertise and knowledge.
Coherent end-to-end services through a single customer view
End-to-end services need to be ‘designed’ from the point the customer starts trying to achieve a goal, to the point when they are finished. This includes website content, transactional interactions, phone, post and face-to-face channels, as well as the digital elements in order to reduce friction and create coherency.
So a complete omni-channel ecosystem powered by the single customer view and profile enables a seamless customer engagement on any device, at any time, in any place.
Customers should be able to self-serve by booking paying and requesting services, report problems and importantly, be able to track progress of their request via any channel through a Single Customer Portal. This will enable the customer to experience a comparable level of service irrespective of the channel they use to make contact via within the limitations of that channel.
Make the mundane invisible
By and large the services a council offers are a necessity so users don’t really care about the services on offer. So making opting in to, paying, renewing and leaving services as easily as possible is key. The service ‘design’ should identify the right channel at the right time to tell the right story. From start to middle and end, in order to deliver a frictionless and somewhat invisible service delivery, removing traditional barriers.
Get customers to their task quickly, anticipate their needs and use a channel that’s most convenient. Don’t make your customers log into an account to pay their council tax if a simple text message with a link to a payment gateway on the day of payment is all they need.
Be proactive not reactive with the touchpoints of the service to help customers use it in a way that suits them by being able to book and pay for services, report problems and request services without having to have an Account. Use coordinated early interventions to avert the escalation of potential issues i.e. receiving alerts, responses and notifications. Enable customers to think only of their needs, not the structure of the organisations delivering the services and make sure their experience if personalised to them, whether that’s through content, language or just understanding what they know to be the moments of truth about where they are in the service lifecycle.
A successful local government service delivery is one that recognises that what is important to the council as a business, may be an inconvenient distraction from their customers' day to day lives.
Service experience extends beyond the customer
But it should not stop with the front end delivery of the service. The service enablers, from managers, to suppliers to delivery agents should be able to access a single view of each customer in order to be able to be able to see a live and accurate view of the customer to be able to quickly and easily search for, view and interrogate previous and current customer interactions with the Council. Teams should be able to easily access, track, analyse and report on performance, identify service bottlenecks, customer trends, and ultimately enable proactive rather than reactive delivery.
The golden rule; disgruntled customers question the value of a service. Delighted customers are more likely to buy additional services.