Maslow’s Hierarchy of Government Customer Service Needs

Two months ago I became a father. As such, I’ve had to navigate a number of government entities in order to get services for my son.

As such, it made me think more about what is great customer service in government. Which after doing some research,

I found this great article on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Customer Service

There’s three tiers of customer service in this model:
-Meets expectation (survival needs)

-Meets desires (success)

-Meets unrecognized needs (transformation)

For myself and my child, I’d categorize activities in this way:

–SSN – Survival – Get my kid a social security number. This was extremely painful in that took 6 weeks and no temporary number so couldn’t get him on health insurance

–Passport – Survival – Get a passport appointment schedule and get passport. This took awhile and you couldn’t book appointments online.

–Breast Pump – Unrecognized need – At the hospital, we were told that under new federal health insurance guidelines, we should be able to get a breast pump covered. This helps us a ton (although we are still struggling to make it happen)

At the basic level, there is still work to be done for government to meet expectations (like get me a SSN quicker & less painful). But there’s a huge opportunity for serving unrecognized needs (cross-sell, tell folks about items they can benefit from but don’t know)