How federal agencies can leverage design thinking to improve employee and customer experience

This article is the second in a three-part series on the link between employee and customer experience at federal agencies, and approaches to improving both. Read parts one and three. 

In the first installment of this series, we looked at the critical link between employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX), providing key considerations for federal leaders as they look to empower employees to perform more effectively while improving digital-first public service delivery.

Designing employee and customer services with humans at the center   

Federal agencies can enhance both CX and EX by embracing human-centered service design strategies, which are grounded in design thinking.  Design thinking can be a valuable tool for understanding customers’ needs and improving their experiences, and also can be used to identify employees’ needs, uncovering key motivators that lead to improved CX. 

Design thinking is fundamental to service designers, enabling them to create or enhance programs and develop innovative methods for engaging customers. However, this problem-solving approach also benefits non-designers, fostering a customer-centric perspective when identifying the need for new government services and assessing their effectiveness.

From human resources and marketing professionals to user experience (UX) designers and IT strategists, many team members leverage five commonly accepted stages of this valuable process: 

The five stages of design thinking 

•  Empathize: Research your users’ needs. 
  Understand what employees need to be effective and what customers need from their interactions with government agencies, programs, and services.
• Define: State your users’ needs and problems. 
  Clearly articulate the challenges and needs identified in the first phase to enable consistent communication across service design teams and illuminate any gaps in understanding.  
• Ideate: Challenge assumptions and generate ideas. 
  Brainstorm and develop ideas for new processes and services, ideally using a collaborative approach that considers multiple perspectives. 
• Prototype: Begin creating solutions. 
  Develop and map out new services and processes that address unique employee and customer needs and opportunities to improve interactions. 
• Test: Try your services out and modify for continuous improvement.
  Evaluate how new services work with test groups or in real-life practice, collecting user experience data to make updates as needed. 

Leveraging design thinking and service design tools to improve EX and CX

Service Design tools enable federal agencies to align and optimize operations, enhancing CX while also improving EX. These tools are aligned with the stages of design thinking and include:

Empathize and Define 
Personas   

These hypothetical “characters” represent types of employees or customers. Including factors like geography, income, skills, education, and other factors can reveal valuable insights into how likely an employee or customer is to use a new technology or tool, or how they will be most successful in accessing and using new information. 

Journey Maps 

These visual tools map an employee’s or customer’s experience with a federal program or service, from first encounter to ongoing interactions over time. By visualizing these touchpoints, organizations can identify areas for CX or EX improvement. Maps can reveal significant moments or sources of frustration, leading to ideation to reduce friction and improve outcomes. These tools provide insights into emotions, needs, and behaviors at each interaction, enabling agencies to re-imagine more empathetic, intuitive, and effective services.   

Ideate and Prototype  
Service Blueprints 

These maps illustrate the steps involved in delivering a service, from initial customer interaction to backend operations. They identify key touchpoints, potential pain points, and areas for improvement, enabling agencies to streamline workflows, allocate resources, and ensure that digital tools and processes will be effective for employees and customers. When used in combination with personas and journey maps, government organizations can predict how well their teams may adapt, and which teams may be resistant to changes.  

Test and Refine  
Evaluation Periods  
Once new services or programs have been developed, a period of evaluation gauges the effectiveness of changes implemented. Have points of friction been reduced? Are customers engaging with new services? Is satisfaction high? Are employees consistently using new tools and resources? Are teams reaching performance benchmarks?  

Implementing modern technologies to drive a total user experience

As agencies embark on digital modernization initiatives in support of improving CX, leveraging industry-leading technologies will of course be crucial in designing new solutions and services. In our last installment of this series, we’ll take a closer look at how federal agencies can select and implement digital-first technologies designed to optimize both employee and customer satisfaction and drive mission outcomes. 

Thoughtful service design whitepaper

Download the white paper to learn how federal agencies can enhance customer experiences (CX) by prioritizing employee experience (EX).