This article is part of a comprehensive report published by the International Foundation for Customer Experience in Government, which aims to enhance the global dialogue on Customer Experience (CX) in the public sector. Drawing on innovative practices from around the world, the report establishes benchmarks for governments to improve their CX initiatives.
TRENDS OF PRACTICE – EXPERIENCE TYPES
Trends in experience types have reflected long-standing themes documented in the customer experience literature, dividing types of customer experiences into two broad categories. They also have been extensively implemented by numerous countries to enhance their standards of CX delivery.
A customer’s experience can be characterized as a combination of their calculative perceptions and their emotional perceptions of service quality.
Emotional perceptions have been established as contributing to almost 50% of customer experiences yet have traditionally only received a secondary focus. Therefore, the following trends are designed to capture this influence.
The first well-established trend involves making experiences more Memorable. While more recent developments in the literature and practice have also involved curating experiences around the second trend – Effortlessness. Memorable and Effortless experiences are part of the agenda of a few leading governments, with key practical examples provided below:
1. MEMORABLE EXPERIENCES
Memorable customer experiences are characterized by a number of key attributes. They are highly engaging to customers, personalized, and supported by empathic staff. This is usually achieved by tapping on opportunities for co-creating or co-delivering with customers, offering tailor-made services or features of services, and developing advanced training for staff to support customers empathetically. The notion of co- creation or co-ownership of services is critical in generating a personalized customer experience, whereby service providers are viewed as providing platforms that enable customers to self-serve and co-create their own unique experiences.
Examples of How to Apply
- Individualize the service value proposition and portfolio. For instance, tailor unemployment services by considering multiple personal characteristics to determine the most effective supportive measures for each customer.
- Maintain customer engagement by regularly conducting surveys and polls to gather customer opinions and preferences.
- Enable co-creation in the design process by hosting ideation sessions where customers and employees brainstorm ideas for implementation during service delivery together. Moreover, use prototyping to involve customers in refining product designs and features. Offer customers customization options that allow them to personalize their experience during delivery.
- Tailor the service journey and procedure steps based on previous customer decisions or preferences. This ensures that customers are only presented with relevant data and selections at each step.
- Utilize previous customer data and service usage history for proactive support. When customers securely log in to digital channels, enable browsing and service journey choices to be guided by such data.
- Provide empathetic customer support by front-line staff who are empowered by relevant training.
2. EFFORTLESS EXPERIENCES
Effortless customer experiences are characterized by four attributes:
This is usually achieved by removing friction, obstacles, or complications in the service journey. This can involve interventions such as reducing the number of touchpoints through the elimination of non-value-adding steps, reducing the number of documents required, digital integration, expanding accessibility considerations both physically and digitally, and training customer-facing staff on key competencies required for exceptional service delivery.
Examples of How to Apply
- Design the service flow to deliver value with minimum customer effort, eliminating unnecessary wait time, steps, friction, and requirements.
- Reuse existing data to reduce customer input, incorporating information from previous encounters and government registers.
- Simplify complexity for customers by exchanging data and integrating processes across different agencies.
- Implement single-window custom channels for a seamless and unified service experience.
- Provide automatic services triggered by specific events proactively, such as granting health insurance coverage when children are born, and incorporate back-end automation to deliver them in an integrated way.
- Offer the customer a bundle of services when they can be applied to at the same time , reducing reminders or lost opportunities.
- Provide top-notch support by the front-line staff when needed.
- Provide proactive information and suggestions about necessary or possible next steps and services. For example, scheduling the next doctor’s appointment before leaving or sending timely reminders about expiring driving licenses.
- Utilize triggers or nudging at touchpoints to suggest suitable information or service offerings based on customers’ personal features or historical data, such as suggesting optimal traffic patrol times or advising customers to avoid peak office or digital channel loads.
- Predict the need or want for services based on accessible (historic and real-time) data.
In the next article, we’ll explore trends in delivery channels and spotlight innovative service delivery modes. Don’t miss out!