Building a customer service approach

Governments are seeking to improve the ways in which they interact with the public, with the aims of streamlining processes, lowering costs and avoiding duplication of effort.

Building a customer service approach is a vital endeavour for all levels of government. Doing so will increase customer satisfaction, improve efficiencies, boost responsiveness and ensure that the services provided are what the customer wants and needs… and that they accord with governments’ mission.

This is not a small task, and it’s one that needs to be done right the first time if those aims are to be achieved.

To get some insights into what governments should be concentrating on for improving customer and client service, we spoke with three industry experts with experience in delivering such outcomes. Bill McMurray, Managing Director (APAC) of Qualtrics, has worked with more than 200 government institutions. Sarah Adam-Gedge is Managing Director of Avanade Australia, a company with a long pedigree in CRM and analytics. And Andrew Foot is General Manager Sales for EMC (ANZ), managing the company’s government, education and utilities business.

GTR: Which are the key drivers in maintaining a successful customer service relationship?

FOOT: Over the past 10 years we’ve seen a shift in how consumers interact with organisations. Online is now the preferred channel, and this is no different for the government. Results from a study found almost half (44%) of Australian and New Zealand respondents are willing to trade personal information for the convenience of an online transaction. This figure showed more trust than in private sector industries such as financial institutions, employment portals or social media channels. This change has enabled technology to be part of everyday life, from making healthcare claims to checking the status of your tax claim.

As expectations evolve, government agencies need to ensure their customer service encompasses three key drivers: speed, simplicity and efficiency. So when developing new applications or frameworks, those agencies should ensure they are providing a service that is easy to use with quick results.

ADAM-GEDGE: Successful customer relationships develop over time through providing consistent, relevant experiences across every touchpoint. Trust is ultimately the most critical factor and therefore greatly impacts customer loyalty and advocacy. For long-term success, organisations need to strive for seamless, simple interactions across both physical and digital touchpoints. Interactions need to be highly personalised, contextual and even adaptive. Understanding how emerging technologies can support the goal of building customers’ trust, intimacy and loyalty will be essential.

MCMURRAY: While the key drivers are not necessarily the same across all organisations, by far the most important driver is that you must action negative feedback from customers. Not actioning negative feedback makes the situation even worse, as the person with the complaint now also thinks they are being ignored.

To be able to action feedback, organisations need to implement the following key drivers: collect both solicited and unsolicited feedback through multiple customer touch points (such as email or SMS surveys, website interactions, call centres or social media); analyse the feedback and put the customer data in front of the right people through digestible stakeholder dashboards (allowing stakeholders to make data-driven decisions in order to transform good customer service into great customer service); act on the customer complaint through a dynamic closed-loop case management system to ensure timely resolution and drive process improvements.

GTR: Where do you see the balance between providing ease of access and preserving customer/client security?

MCMURRAY: The website is where this conflict of ease of information access and customer security occurs most visibly. The vast majority of people now search for information they need on a website, in preference to calling or physically visiting an office. Clearly unclassified and non-personal data can be made available to everyone, but classified and personal data must be properly security protected. Whether a customer has had to sign in or not, website intercept systems can be put in place to assist a customer to easily find what they are looking for or to complete their desired transaction.

ADAM-GEDGE: As governments collect more and more data about their customers, maintaining trust in how this data is accessed, protected and used is becoming increasingly critical. Governments have not only legal obligations around data security and privacy, but also social and ethical responsibilities.

There is sometimes a fine balance between tailoring a service based on customer data and ‘crossing the creepy line’ — an uncomfortable, unsettling level of personalisation. Governments need to consider a digital ethics framework to guide decisions around customer data, together with appropriate security measures across people, processes and platforms. Citizens will expect that governments lead best practices in ‘privacy and security by design’.

FOOT: With consumers stating 24/7 access as their most important expectation, it’s no wonder governments are looking to mobile applications and online services to achieve this goal. However, security threats are continuing to evolve faster than most organisations’ ability to detect and respond to them. Factor in government policies and the highly confidential data that government agencies are working with, and it’s clear this area needs to be top off the agenda.

While access and security are at the opposite ends of the scale, there has to be a balance. With an increased focus towards monitoring, detection and response rather than an intense focus on prevention, we see this balance evening out over the next year.

GTR: How can government departments and agencies best measure customer service success?

MCMURRAY: Ask the citizens! If they’ve used your service or had an interaction, information on their customer service experience can be collected by email or SMS survey, website feedback tabs, call centres and/or social media. These collection points allow you to ask them about their experience and for ways to improve your service. This is exactly what the US Government has done with its website for healthcare.gov. They collect, analyse and act on thousands of items of feedback every day. This feedback can be rated on various scales such as Citizen Satisfaction And Trust (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Citizen Effort Score (CES), enabling you to understand your performance against industry benchmarks.

FOOT: The data sources to measure the success of customer services are already at the government’s fingertips. Analysing social media sentiment around particular policies or using a system similar to the Canadian Government’s Common Management Tool (CMT) will provide a standard data set across all government departments or agencies.

However, before the data analysis starts, it is imperative that a process for dealing with vast amounts of data is in place. We see many organisations, both public and private sector, becoming overwhelmed with handling data. There are several factors to consider before embarking on a big data journey. Think about where the data is being stored, whether it will be hosted on a private, public or hybrid cloud and whether reliable, secure 24/7 access is achievable.

GTR: Which technologies or approaches will be ‘game changers’ in customer service in 2016?

ADAM-GEDGE: Arguably, the biggest game changer for customer service will be data and analytics. More customers expect a personalised experience, which may adapt in real time depending on context — where the customer is, what they are currently doing and even how they are feeling. An unprecedented level of collaboration across marketing, technology, research and operations will be required to exploit the full value of customer data and analytics.

Even inside organisations, it’s no secret that employees are disillusioned by the usual array of clunky workplace applications when their consumer technology experience has become so simple and intuitive. Governments that pursue an iconic digital workplace experience can expect to find a clear differentiator for them in the pursuit and retention of talent.

MCMURRAY: Websites, mobility and customer experience management systems. With the population becoming more technically savvy, the importance of a customer’s website experience has grown exponentially. It is critical to ensure a frictionless experience as people search for, locate and satisfy their requirements on the website. This frictionless interaction needs to be fully executable on mobile devices. Website intercept technologies can help customers quickly and easily achieve their objectives by offering assistance or support when they appear to be having difficulty. Customer experience management systems with dynamic closed-loop case management capabilities will be game changers in 2016 in ensuring the timely resolution of customer issues and to drive process improvements.

FOOT: There’ll be three main game changers for 2016: mobile applications, wearables and Software as a Service.

Mobile apps are essential to keeping government agencies and departments relevant to their audiences. Wearables are already more mainstream than anyone would have predicted, and with this brings precious data. The government needs to harness this data and explore the insights it can offer. We have seen this in the insurance sector, where they use Fitbit data in order to set the premium for insurance policies depending on your lifestyle.

We have seen parts of government leverage SaaS in recent years. Rolling this out more widely will enable each agency and department to deliver greater levels of customisation and agility in their go-to market offering. This is the biggest game changer for the government to improve customer service.

Image courtesy of plantronicsgermany under CC