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.
I‘d like to start to discuss the third principle – leveraging today’s technology and data. Technology, in this day and age, allows for a paradigm shift in both the way that the customer interacts with your organization (today) and the way your organization can optimize its business (more on that next week).
For many years, customers began their experience with a business or a government agency with a face-to-face visit at a store or office and formed their first impressions of that organization through that interaction. Now, most first experiences with any given company or government department are through electronic means. Websites, phone calls, web chat, emails, social media, smart phone ‘apps’, and other forms of communication dominate the way the majority of business is conducted in 2011.
In many ways, today’s technology has made enhancing a customer’s experience with your company or organization a much easier task. Modern technology allows the customer to easily choose how they want to interact with your organization at the time, in the place, and in the manner with which they are most comfortable.
Today’s applications and solutions enable commercial businesses and government agencies to personalize the experience for their customers. By understanding their previous actions and customizing this interaction to their personal preferences, organizations can now optimize this exchange by providing more valuable and targeted information, in a timely manner and at a lower cost. This will enhance the customer experience and in turn drive repeat business from a satisfied consumer.
Numerous products are available to help manage your organization’s interactions. While some may claim to be better than others, in my opinion, after many years at IBM and Accenture working with these tools, they all have strengths and weaknesses.
Choosing one over another for your organization depends on how their tools map to your customer strategy and enable your business processes. If you have already defined your experience, strategy, and background processes, then you can focus on choosing and implementing the technology with the features that best fit your needs. (If you have not done this already, go back and re-read my previous blog posts.)
The biggest benefit today’s technology offers customers is that it increases their options. Specifically, for government agencies, President Obama’s order pushes the Federal Government to leverage the technology available today to provide multiple interaction options to Americans when they do business with Federal agencies.
One of my favorite clients once made a critical ‘faux-pas’ in a recent implementation… the agency provided limited and non-preferred channels for collecting of critical information from Americans.
In 2010 (hint), the Federal Government surveyed the American population to collect key demographic information from more than 300 million people in the United States (hint hint). To collect this information, the agency sent out more than 100 million pieces of mail with paper surveys to collect, process, and analyze this data. There was a phone number recipients could call with questions, but the original design did not allow recipients to provide their data over the phone. In addition, if you somehow lost or did not respond to this questionnaire, you either had to call in to request a new one, wait until a second mailing arrived, OR wait even longer until someone knocked on your door to collect the data.
Having worked with this agency for years, I understood all their major political and IT security concerns, as well as the agency’s true goals and objectives. They had rationales on why no additional channels should be offered for this operation. Although their rationales were reasonable, they never really addressed how to engage their core consumer in the way that today’s Americans prefer to do business.
Many respondents were completely fine with opening the mail, filling out the survey, and sending the piece of paper in. This is a perfectly acceptable channel to collect information. However, there were a SIGNIFICANT number of Americans who would have much preferred to log into a website and provide this information electronically or to dial into a phone number and provide this data to an agent. They would have felt more secure using these methods, as well.
What most Americans really did not want was for the government to come knocking on their door. When we reached this phase of the operation, we had to modify the system to suddenly allow people to provide their information by phone, since there had been so many complaints about the face-to-face collection method and the lack of alternative channels to provide information. As a result, numerous news reports, articles, and other ‘negative’ media reports drew attention away from the incredible efforts this agency made to accomplish their mission.
It was not that this client did anything ‘wrong’ by providing only two channels for data collection. However, by not offering alternative data collection methods they failed to provide an optimized solution. This ended up costing the agency hundreds of millions of dollars more, drew negative attention to their work, and ultimately provided a lower overall quality of service.
Corporations cannot survive without optimized solutions to customer interaction issues, and now, with the Presidential mandate, government agencies face increased pressure as well. Customers today want the options and personalized service today’s technology can provide. If you don’t know how, let us know and we can help at SAG. Feel free to email, call, tweet, mail, visit our website, post a Facebook or blog comment, or just stop by for a chat.
(Part II will be posted next week.)
No comments:
Post a Comment