Decoding Government Customer Experience

Over the past year, it’s become apparent that while the federal government has had some take-up and focus on customer experience (CX) across the government, there remains different understandings of customer and/or citizen experience. There are many definitions but many would like a definition that’s codified by the Administration. As we know, customer experience has been integrated into the President’s Management Agenda through Cross Agency Priority (CAP) Goal #4: Improving the Customer Experience with Government Services; Section 280 of OMB Circular A-11 on Managing Customer Experience and Improving Service Delivery and the GSA Centers of Excellence.

Section 280 of A-11 defines federal customer experience as a combination of factors that result from touchpoints between an individual, business, or organization and the federal government over the duration of an interaction and relationship. Factors include:

• ease/simplicity
• efficiency/speed
• equity/transparency of the process
• effectiveness/quality of the service itself 
• helpfulness of service delivery employees

The goal of the CAP goal is to improve the CX with government services by providing a modern, streamlined and responsive customer experience across government, comparable to leading private sector organizations. It includes governance, design, measurement, customer understanding, and organization and culture. In fact, the top 25 high impact services have just completed the first round of self assessments in these areas and created action plans to focus on their top two and are posted on performance.gov/cx.

In addition to the Administration’s focus on CX, Congress has passed the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act (IDEA) to focus on the digital service aspect of CX. The Chief Information Officers have been given responsibility for digital services, including working across the agency to ensure they are funded and that key services are delivered in a digital manner. Specifically, they are required to upgrade federal websites and internal intranets, implement electronic or digital forms and electronic signatures. Agencies are preparing reports that assesses their compliance with the federal web standard system and the remaining requirements in the law.

Other commercial definitions include:

• “How customers perceive their interactions with your company.” Harley Manning, Vice President, CX, Forrester
• “It’s a disciplined practice of analyzing and anticipating your customers’ needs in a holistic way and intentionally designing experiences that deliver on brand promises. It’s not customer service.” CXPA, 2019
• “Customer experience is all the ways that a consumer interfaces with a brand. This includes things like price, product, user interface, communication, service and much, much more including customer service, brand affinity, communication, web interface, store environment, product. Julia Ahlfeldt (CX Expert, CXPA)
• “CX is the perception your customers have with your organization across all touchpoints.” Anahita Reilly, former GSA CCO

That said, what seems to be more important than a definition are the attributes of CX: While different words are used, they all points towards CX as:

• a business discipline, not a “nice to have.”
• the entire end-to-end journey, not a single touchpoint.
• broader than customer service and includes governance, measurement, customer research, organization and culture, design per CAP goal priorities.
• meeting and possibly exceeding the expectations of your customers.
• how you FEEL about a brand or relationship with a company, organization, agency. Whether you use the term perception, perceive, impression, etc.
• applicable to external customers (e.g., citizens, businesses, other government agencies) and internal customers (e.g., employees).
• everyone’s job.

CX brings excellence to the delivery of government services. The lack of understanding about the possible benefits of CX seems to be a roadblock to adoption. In addition, bolting CX on at the end leads agencies to the belief that they don’t have the funding or additional resources. With the possible benefits of CX beginning with understanding the operational and customer feedback data to establishing metrics that matter to customers/citizens to ensure resources are spent wisely, it’s a mystery when any agency states that they have no CX issues. That said, here are a few of these benefits that accelerates mission delivery:

• Customer experience is critical to building trust in government
• Research from McKinsey & Company found that:
• Citizens who are satisfied with government services are 9x more likely to trust the agency
• Satisfied customers are 9x more likely to agree an agency is delivering on their mission
• Dissatisfied customers are 2x more likely to reach out for help 3+ times
• Dissatisfied customers are 2x more likely publicly express dissatisfaction
• CX reduces cost (e.g. reduces duplication, solves the problem at first contact, reduces the number of overhead and contracts when optimizing contact centers)
• CX increases revenue (e.g., increases customer loyalty)
• CX improves employee engagement
• CX improves delivery of mission (e.g., improves veterans' health, provides services to farmers, delivers benefits to seniors)
• CX improves voluntary compliance (e.g., 1% increase in tax revenue is $36B, increases census completion)
• CX increases trust in government

The confusion between customer experience, customer service and user experience creates some obstacles to moving forward. I recently heard a case study that illustrated the differences and the impact of focusing on the end-to-end journey and not just a technology or single touchpoint.  When Doug Dietz, the designer of the MRI observed the MRI in use, he witnessed a child terrified of the machine. Because of the fear children have when getting an MRI, about 80 percent of children need to be sedated. They are big, noisy and often sit in sterile rooms, painted dull colors with warning signs on the walls and yellow tape on the floor. He immediately created a design team to focus on the full experience with designers from children’s museums, teachers, kids and hospital staff. Together they created ideas to paint the MRIs and the walls with colorful scenes from the jungle or other environments along with paths of stones leading to the room. As a result of this focus, less children need to be sedated and more MRIs can be scheduled because it takes less time to conduct them. When he later witnessed a child asking her parent if they could come back tomorrow, he knew he accomplished his mission. Listen to the Ted Talk about this important example of customer experience.  

Improving the services the government provides to citizens is everyone’s job, both inside of government and their industry partners as well. If you want to acknowledge a great accomplishment in this area, nominate a champion of change or a team of champions for the 2020 Service to the Citizen Award. Citizens deserve a 21st century experience.