How to Lay the Foundation for a Positive Constituent Experience

The starting point for a good constituent experience (CX) is a good employee experience.

To deliver the CX expected today — seamless interactions that take place across digital and voice channels — requires data and application integration. Agency employees need to be able to immediately engage with the customer through his or her preferred channel and cannot stumble opening applications and searching for information to solve the customer’s problem.

According to Gartner’s Integration Maturity Model (August 2020), by 2023 at least 50% of organizations will have an integration strategy empowerment team to support self-service integration approaches. The average employee uses eight applications when they work, and the typical 200-500-person organization uses an average of 123 applications across the enterprise.

Integrating these applications lets data flow freely and helps improve CX. For example, by integrating the CRM with the contact center, user data can display in a pop-up for the agent when a customer calls without having to log into the CRM. But integration is not just about easy access to information it’s also about speed to resolution:

• By integrating a customer relationship management platform with its contact center, the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services would be able to quickly and efficiently resolve beneficiary inquiries about coverage, claims and/or status on appeals.

• By integrating customer relationship management platforms with agencies, like the Department of Social Services, it makes it possible for food stamp enrollees to easily activate a new card by setting up a PIN—without ever needing to speak with an agent.

All this means fewer apps, fewer clicks, more space for innovative approaches and less wait time.

Out-of-the-box integrations accelerate ROI

To get the fastest ROI, look for cloud contact centers that offer out-of-the-box integrations with the applications most commonly used to support call center agents—CRM, workforce management (WFM), collaboration, etc.

Common workflows are often already mapped out across applications and do not require coding to build and automate. Once your core CX applications are integrated you should see an immediate impact on:

• Reducing average call handle time
• Improving first call resolution
• Optimizing staffing
• Eliminating extensive development time

Ideally, it’s best to integrate every customer data application designed to improve CX and empower agents to anticipate customer needs. This is often best accomplished in stages to ensure adoption and minimize disruption. Cloud platforms that publish well-documented and easy-to-use APIs are more effective when integrating a complex enterprise architecture with robust development needs. Integrated systems set the foundation for automation, the next step on the path to digital transformation.

To learn more about how to transform the public sector contact center, read the new whitepaper from Talldesk.