by Chris Domergue, Director of Client Services
As I discussed in my May 26 post , President Obama’s April 27, 2011 executive order, titled “Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service,” requires Federal agencies to quickly come up with ways to use technology to improve their service to their customers.
In my post, I recommended four principles that, if followed, will result in a successful customer service strategy: defining the customer experience; focusing on consistent information; leveraging today’s technology and data; and making customer experience one of your core functions. Today, I‘d like to discuss the second principle – focusing on consistent information.
There are many ways in which customers interact with government agencies today. Citizens can be serviced in person, via the phone, or by utilizing the latest technologies on the web, in social media, and on mobile applications. If organizations truly want to provide their customers with the best possible experience, the old cliché rings true – everyone needs to be singing off the same sheet of music.
Each employee involved with customer service must be saying the same things, in the same ways, to everyone with whom they come in contact. Without that consistency, most customers feel confused, frustrated, and puzzled by the complexity of what should be a common set of services.
I worked with one large government agency that allowed citizens to apply, receive, and repay federal student loans. This agency had a significant problem in the way this process was implemented as related to providing customer service. Each phase of the process was owned by a different organization and in turn processed by a different contractor.
You could apply online for a loan: however, when you were approved for the loan and it was processed, a different company (with only phone capabilities) originated your loan and paid your school directly. Finally, once you finished school and your loans were due for repayment, a completely different organization handled the repayment process. In this scenario, a student was provided very different information across different channels at different points in the process.
Imagine trying to start the first day of school away from home only to be removed from class to deal with some financial issues with the registrar. Then, imagine spending three days talking to multiple groups to sort out what happened – a very real scenario I encountered.
Inherently, there is nothing wrong with having different owners and organizations maintain discreet components of the process. However, if these different players do not provide consistent information across similar channels, it causes an incredibly exasperating experience for your audience.
Quite simply, if this is the situation, and your customers have options, they will choose to leave your service. With the Federal government, however, many agencies have a captive audience without the ability to be serviced elsewhere. Still, as President Obama’s order emphasizes, that is not an excuse to offer subpar service.
Consistent information is not only providing the same answer to one question across multiple channels, but also understanding a customer’s history. Customers want any service department to know of their past transactions with that organization. Additionally, they expect that if they are transferred from one part of the company to another, they won’t have to repeat their entire story every time they speak with something new. Today’s technologies can make that possible, but even with the best technology it is still inherent on the organization to ensure that each customer facing component has access to the same information.
Meeting those expectations is not a simple matter for most federal agencies, especially large ones. That’s because these distinctive areas have different people responsible for managing them—individual “owners,” if you will. However, each owner must make sure that information they have is correct in the entire customer facing ecosystem. If that information is inaccurate or does not exist in some of the access points, then it will cause unnecessary confusion for your customers.
Just like this blog, it might be filled with some good insights, but if nobody is reading it…is the information getting through?
The problem of customer service silos is everywhere, but especially prevalent in government agencies. Those silos don’t go away easily, or quickly, but it can be done. By following my recommended process, in which you start by defining your desired customer experience and then focus on providing consistent information to your constituents, you will be on the road to transforming into a world-class service provider.
And to the readers that do follow our blog… THANKS! (And feel free to forward, tweet, or ‘Like’ it on Facebook too)
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