By Adina Witthaus, Product Manager at GovDelivery
We’ve all experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly side of customer service. However, when businesses provide us with great service, we happily interact with them again and again. It’s the coffee shop that knows your drink of choice or the online retailer with free returns and recommended products. The private sector has taken huge strides to deliver the very best service to their customers; some have even built their business around achieving this goal.
But what about the public sector? Why is service also important to government? Customers who want top-notch service from the private sector are the same people your government organization services – and they come with high expectations.
Citizens today demand a certain level of responsiveness and efficiency in their interactions with government. The immediacy of the web and increased usage of mobile are two of many driving forces that have moved government to take a multi-channel approach to their “citizen service” interactions. This strategy connects citizens with resources and staff members using whatever method the public prefers: email, web, phone, mail, or face-to-face interaction.
However, there are challenges to providing this desired level of citizen service. Establishing a communication strategy and supporting it with a lack of budget and resources can be difficult. So, what can government organization do to meet the high service expectations of their citizens?
1. Get the web to work for you and your citizens. Leverage an online knowledge base to address FAQs (frequently asked questions). Citizens will appreciate the shift to a self-serve approach versus potentially getting caught up in an unwieldy process. For you, this will lighten the load of requests and instill consistent and correct responses to questions that are most often asked of you and your colleagues. This is the fastest way to reduce avoidable contact.
2. Automation, automation, automation. Let technology pick up where the online knowledge base trails off. Use automated techniques to streamline the process of quickly getting citizen requests to the right subject matter expert. Understand the areas in your service workflows that can be automated, so staff can be freed up to focus on higher operating goals.
3. Know your faults and optimize your successes. Capture and analyze metrics to identify gaps and successes with your service efforts. Use this information to establish an ongoing improvement process, and let the data guide your next move to better citizen service.
As changing communications and technologies have enhanced private sector customer service, citizen expectations have increased. The public simply expects all levels of government to offer similar high-quality citizen service. If your government organization is struggling to keep up with ever-increasing citizen requests, contact us today for more information or download our The State of Customer Service Management: A look at government needs white paper.