Page 12 - CARAHSOFT, May 2021

Digitally Transforming the Customer Experience
Government
unifies the citizen
experience, goes
digital
Customer-centric thinking is not new, but the pandemic has given government agencies a newfound impetus to act
Thomas Saracene
Senior Director of Digital Transformation, Global Public Sector, Salesforce
Agencies should start thinking about creating a unified engagement layer
that can house everything they know about a customer and that customer’s journey over time to ensure a positive, productive experience. That engagement layer also makes it possible for agencies to modernize back-office activities
and seamlessly improve the customer experience.
Thanks to the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act, government agencies have been modernizing websites and digitizing forms. But those websites and forms are still disconnected from the data and still fail to address the customer life cycle. Furthermore, agencies must
DURING THE PANDEMIC,
out of necessity, everyone has been
interacting digitally more than ever before. And we’re relying more heavily on government services than we have since the Great Depression. Those interactions tend to involve the most important aspects of our lives, such as housing, health care and financial stability.
At the same time, the volume of
those demands and the mechanisms for responding to them are changing, which is forcing government agencies to find ways to be more effective and efficient.
If we have the ability to sell luxury items through targeted, tailored and emotion-driven customer engagements, then we should be able to help
families keep a roof over their
heads and put food on the table
with the same level of empathy and personalization.
We need scalable solutions, and we need to eliminate silos and redundancies across government services. We now have proven systems and data to support
that effort. The question is: Can government agencies handle the organizational changes and how quickly can they act?
Informed by data and designed around the customer
To achieve that transformation, government must begin by pivoting to a customer-centric approach to
all activities within and across agencies. Digital engagement should be informed by data and designed around the customer, not around internal processes. Shifting
to an outward, customer-centric view requires retooling at the system, data and organizational levels.
That shift involves assembling a holistic picture of the customer so that services are delivered in context. Data is essential at every stage of the process and should be used to validate the customer’s needs and next steps. Data can also be used to guide customers through the life cycle of their interactions and allow agencies to hand off a customer from one program to another one or even to another agency.
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