What can councils do now to build the customer journey for tomorrow?<\/p>\n
Austerity measures, rapid technology enhancements and customers\u2019 digital expectations have all acted as a catalyst in the demand for (and ability to deliver) online public services. From registering the birth of a child, or providing an environment for customers to interact 24\/7 with a council, most councils are somewhere along the road of transforming their services to make them easier to use and more efficient.<\/p>\n
Inevitably, there will be local challenges and digital drivers \u2013 but we also see several common principles that all local authorities should be considering when embarking on projects to improve the customer experience.<\/p>\n
Pragmatism can often be overlooked in the race to implement the next piece of technology or a slicker customer journey. Very often it is the smaller, iterative changes that can add real benefit. In a world of fast moving technology and reduced budgets, digital pragmatism is exactly what local authorities require. Many small gains can accumulate to large-scale savings.<\/p>\n
Start with the end user. It means you can truly understand the demographic of your service users and will allow you to design a service in the optimal way to achieve objectives.<\/p>\n
Always focus on the end-to-end journey. You could create a well-designed website, full of online services, but how do you get customers on the website in the first place? Consider how new and existing access channels work together seamlessly.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just about the technology. Whether you are buying an off-the-shelf product or building a bespoke system, software is clearly an enabler to achieving your financial and customer satisfaction objectives. However, the extent to which you have integration as part of your customers\u2019 journey is the key to maximising success, as this supports a seamless customer experience<\/p>\n
A council\u2019s website is increasingly becoming the front door to services. Housing good quality and accessible content is more important than ever. Poor navigation, broken links, jargon-heavy pages or simply not putting the online options at the fore can have a negative impact and result in customers defaulting to non-online options. Investment is being made into e-forms and content management systems (CMS) but the way in which content is being managed is not always changing at the same pace.<\/p>\n
Off-the-shelf products can provide a generic solution for webforms. This makes sense, for example, reporting a missed bin is the same wherever you are, right? But does that form have the same user experience as the rest of your site? Is the layout accessible to the service user and demographic? Does the form integrate to core back office systems? And, do you have the skills and access to update the form to respond to customer behaviours without incurring significant cost? These questions should always be addressed to generate the best results.<\/p>\n
This might sound strange but there will always be room for improvement because technology, customer habits and public services never stand still.\u00a0 When a programme or project is finished there should always be a function for quality monitoring and reviewing customer feedback and interactions. As services become further digitised, the role of contact centres will change and you should think about how you re-invest some of these financial efficiencies into resources to continually drive further improvements in service delivery.<\/p>\n
Achieving the right balance of customer journey improvements and financial efficiencies can present resourcing challenges. Understandably in this climate, local authorities won\u2019t always have the in-house capacity or blend of skills to do all of these things, but many organisations are now identifying where they have gaps and are finding flexible ways to access specific skills and capacity, for example through agile project delivery or \u2018work alongside models\u2019 from the private sector. Councils adopting this pragmatic approach to digital will be more likely to generate higher returns on digital and be well-placed to adapt as technology continually evolves.<\/p>\n