At the federal, state and local levels of government, the interactions a citizen has with a government agency is an opportunity to be shown their government understands and can meet their needs. The value a citizen perceives in an agency lies in the quality of their interactions. It can mean getting connected to the right person on the first attempt or not spending their day waiting in a line. It can trigger a positive shift in their experience.
Citizens define good customer experience in different ways. A few of those ways are service improvements, the speed of access to information or knowledgable staff and resolving complaints.
Better Experience Starts with Better Engagement
Most times, citizens are engaging with an agency because of a life event. They are looking for assistance with their retirement, an application for financial aid or accessing survivor benefits. Imagining the experience from the standpoint of the citizen and employing tactics from the private sector, such as automation and analytics can help.
Automation can help deliver real-time, relevant information with every interaction by engaging citizens in channels they prefer like self-service, chat, and social media. Appointment self-scheduling and automated meeting reminders deliver convenience and increased quality of service to the citizen. Other experiences like online check-in or front-of-line service can reduce citizen frustration and negative public opinion.
Better Engagement Drives Organizational Value
An engagement solution like SUMO helps connect functional and channel-based silos that can create roadblocks in the citizen journey. Appointment automation removes the manual burden of staff checking calendars, phone tag and other agency resources being wasted on no-shows. Online check-in and front-of-line service increase speed of service.
Data is another resource that can improve the customer experience. Government staff does not always have a full picture of the citizen or the various services and departments they have already interacted with when they encounter them. The challenge of serving citizens effectively lies in determining who the individual is and what is it that they need. Attaching important citizen data with a scheduled meeting can reduce friction, provide immediate access to a citizen’s history and help staff better understand their needs.
Many agencies using Salesforce can better utilize the data stored in the CRM platform in this manner. By being able to send out appointment information directly from a case, all citizen information is centralized, reducing the need for staff to cross-reference other sources and can deliver service quickly and effectively.
Siloed data obstructs the view of the citizen journey. Collecting and using data from these channels – service type and time spent with the citizen can help managers make informed decisions to improve service efforts. They can spend less time searching for related information to a citizen’s case and spend more time serving.
Customer Engagement Connects the Dots
Agency leaders are beginning to recognize the connection between employee and customer experience. An engagement solution can directly trigger benefits for both the agency and its citizens. A Salesforce-native engagement solution like SUMO can help government agencies at every level transform their existing processes into individualized citizen experiences across many touchpoints. Good citizen engagement is good customer engagement and it drives success internally and externally. SUMO’s platform enables agencies to speed appointments and better meet citizen needs and behaviors.
