Public-sector customer experience (CX) is complex and gets to the heart of how employees and constituents interact with and perceive agencies’ products and services.
Yet pleasing both groups grows harder every time government workforce, budget and other constraints change. How can agencies fit their talent and constituents under the same umbrella while satisfying everyone’s needs?
Agencies are increasingly supplementing their limited in-house resources with the on-demand benefits that cloud computing provides. Using the cloud’s on-demand capabilities like data analytics, agencies can assist any internal and external users alike.
“Government is starting to see that improving CX is a win for everybody,” said Matt Hale, Senior Solutions
Consultant at Zendesk, Inc., a cloud-based customer service solutions provider. “Digitized processes can improve the experience for constituents and staff.”
Hale explained three ways that the cloud can help agencies deliver a pleasant CX to all their users.
Draw inspiration from data
Knowledge is power, and the data that the cloud can collect, analyze and store can drive positive momentum across agencies’ internal and external CX efforts.
“The data is the best place to start,” Hale said. “The good thing about today’s robust service platforms is that they are generating a wealth of insights.”
Take tasks such as applying for driver’s licenses that often have long wait times. Leveraging cloud-based data analytics, agencies can find and improve such potential pitfalls.
“Look for spots where customers or constituents might become frustrated or overwhelmed by service delivery,” Hale said.
Offer omnichannel communication
Most people communicate via several digital channels. Constituents and government employees are no exception, so agencies should embrace as many communication mediums as possible.
“CX rests on building a strategy that is going to be rooted in modern means of communication with constituents,” Hale said. “It is the channels that they are already using in their private lives.”
Consider the Illinois Court Help program, which informs the public about the state’s judicial system. Recently, the program launched a cloud-based help center. This website gives the initiative’s roughly 2 million customers a digital-first option for easily accessing court forms, processes and information. For the program’s employees, the result is significant savings in energy, funding and time.
Embrace elasticity
The cloud’s decentralized IT model lets agencies add new tools to their infrastructure more quickly and easily. Ideally, the goal is fueling agencywide agility with cloudbased abilities.
“I like to think of the software we use in this space as a toolkit to make the constituent experience better,” Hale said.
Agencies adopting the cloud should consider its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, which delivers software on a subscription basis. SaaS clouds like those Zendesk, Inc. provides can enable diverse CX innovations—like applications for communicating with the public—for agencies.
“This software is constantly evolving and constantly being updated,” Hale said. “There is always something that can be done.”
This article is an excerpt from GovLoop’s guide “Customer Experience Beyond Memos: A How-To Guide.”
