Page 12 - FCW, January/February 2021

Customer-First Mindset
PRIORITIZING THE
Customer Experience
As customer expectations evolve, agencies are finding that digital ervices and IT modernization are the keys to better CX
sAGENCIES AT THE federal, state and local levels have been engaged in efforts to make their activities more customer-focused for years. Progress has been rapid for some, but others have been slow to allocate resources to the work involved in understanding the customer experience (CX) and invest in the technology and processes to improve it.
However, the pandemic and resulting economic downturn have been a wake-up call to agencies that they can no longer afford to delay their CX initiatives, particularly the move to digital services.
According to Performance.gov — which reports on agencies’ efforts to deliver a smarter, leaner and more effective government — agencies continue to improve call center functionality, solicit and incorporate feedback from customers, embed CX into strategic planning and governance, and build omnichannel, fully digital services.
Reflecting on the third year of efforts to achieve the cross-agency priority goal on improving customer experiences with federal services, the team at Performance.gov wrote in a Jan. 8 blog post: “We continue to be inspired by the impressive public servants across government who are deeply connected to their mission and the people they serve.” However, the authors also noted that “while we continue to improve CX outcomes, we continue to have a lot of opportunity in front of us.”
Rick Parrish, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, urges the Biden administration to elevate CX to an even higher level. In a blog post, he advocated creating a permanent federal chief customer officer role “to oversee policy, spending and interagency coordination for all federal [CX] efforts.”
He added that despite modest gains at some agencies, “Forrester’s Customer Experience Index shows that the quality of federal CX remains poor and lags the private sector. Average federal CX quality has risen only 4.6 points on our 100-point scale — from 56.5 to 61.1 — from 2015 to 2020. Many agencies’ scores have remained flat that entire time.”
In stressing the importance of a federal chief customer officer, Parrish said: “Given the vastness and complexity of the federal government, just keeping up with the pace
of rising customer expectations is a win. Nevertheless, Washington needs to do better.”
Digital services are here to stay
Although improving CX was already a priority to varying degrees for government agencies,
the pandemic highlighted just how important those initiatives are. The agencies that pivoted most quickly to support teleworkers and expand digital services for citizens were those that were already heavily committed to IT modernization.
For example, state agencies across the country turned to chatbots to help them answer questions about unemployment benefits
and pandemic-related assistance. For many agencies, that contact volume jumped from thousands to millions in a matter of weeks. Gartner predicts that by 2022, 70% of customer interactions will involve an emerging technology such as machine learning, chatbots or mobile messaging, and 20% of all customer service interactions will be completely handled by artificial intelligence. And those changes are being driven by customer expectations.
During the pandemic, agencies also had to support a workforce that shifted virtually overnight from on-site to online work. The IT team had to quickly address challenges related to protecting agency data in the cloud, authenticating users, and making sure employees had the skills and tools to deliver customer services remotely.
Experts and government officials believe
that many aspects of telework are here to stay. The shift to a distributed workforce prompted many states to use federal funds under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act to expand their broadband capacity, which benefits workers and helps ensure that all students can access online education while schools are closed.
The realization that those challenges won’t disappear when the coronavirus subsides is evident in the fact that “Digital Government/ Digital Services” is No. 2 on the National Association of State CIOs’ Top 10 Priorities List for 2021 (behind “Cybersecurity and
S-10 SSPPONSSORREEDCCONTTEENTT
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