Agencies are refining their approach to customer experience and using service delivery data to understand how their customers prefer to do business with the federal government.
MaryAnn Monroe, managing director of the CX Accelerator at Maximus, said artificial intelligence tools are making it possible for agencies to reduce the administrative burdens that fall on customers and the frontline federal employees who provide those customer experiences.
“We are in lockstep with our agency partners to deliver frictionless, simple experiences — decrease the time, make it simpler for people to interact and transact with the federal government. Make it easier for employees to focus on mission outcomes,” Monroe said during Federal News Network’s CX Exchange.
Another key to frictionless service delivery is giving customers an omnichannel customer experience, she said. That means allowing them to get help in person, over the phone or online.
“At Maximus, we serve so many different members of the public, from taxpayers to student loan borrowers, to veterans, to service members, to Medicare beneficiaries. It’s being able to span those multiple ways of communicating and ways to engage so that they can accomplish their tasks, but also further the mission of the agencies in terms of delivering better outcomes or higher beneficiary satisfaction and enrollment. It’s simple, frictionless interactions spanning multiple channels,” Monroe said.
The power of personalization in refining service delivery
For many agencies, providing personalized experiences for customers is the next evolution in their CX and service delivery strategies.
“How do we move to a more proactive, personalized delivery of service? That’s really where we’re seeing the shift,” Monroe said. “We’re moving our customers to really focus on that proactive service delivery so that we can more anticipate versus react.”
Dave Raley, CX digital program manager for Marine Corps Community Services, described his agency as in the “early stages” of personalizing experiences for Marines and their families.
“We’re moving from a very fragmented, siloed approach. We have all the data, but we’re not actually using it to create the personalization. A lot of the experiences right now are very generic and not personalized, and so we’re on that journey to move to a hyper-personalized” model for engaging with MCCS,” he said. “Think about the way that Marriott or Disney choreographs an experience for somebody, whether it’s a stay or going to going to a park. It’s the same idea — the base is an ecosystem that has all kinds of services and capabilities that help reduce friction.”
At Customs and Border Protection, the goal is to provide personalized services at speed and scale, said James McCament, CBP’s chief digital transformation officer. The agency has used AI to help screen more than 700 million travelers as part of its Global Entry program, he noted.
“Personalizing does not mean slowing down,” McCament said. “You should be able to go fast if we have a secure view of your identity and your background. We should also then add more time to mission when we need to talk to someone because we have concerns.”
CBP last year rolled out its Vessel Entrance and Clearance System, a digitized process that automated many parts of a previously paper-based process for importers.
VECS has let CBP “more quickly facilitate the processing,” McCament said. “It actually gave almost 300,000 hours in processing time back to our agency and for the brokers and filers.”
The value of listening to deliver better service
Better service delivery in government means listening to customers and incorporating that feedback into new features.
“It’s a continuous process, and you learn so much from the people who are working through that process, that you can then go back and fine-tune and hone,” Monroe said. “It’s really important that when we’re thinking about customer experience, we never forget that continuous feedback loop is so important to the process of improving experiences, no matter what we’re doing and for whom.”
Raley said the approval process for customer surveys in government is burdensome, time-consuming and doesn’t result in much benefit. There are better ways to gather feedback from customers, he said.
“There’s lot of passive ways to listen. How are people reacting in a digital space? What are they consuming or not consuming? How are they behaving? For us, it’s exploring what are all the ways we can passively listen and understand and gather information around customer behavior so that we can improve the experience,” he said.
CBP’s Global Entry website saw nearly 9 million visitors last year. McCament said his team is partnering with CBP’s Office of Information Technology to run usability testing on the site.
“Even if someone’s using your services at a high volume, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to redirect and look at this with fresh eyes,” he said. “The CBP team listens to the Global Entry applicants, and our own officers made a great number of changes to the website, and we’ve been getting a lot of good feedback on that. It was an example of where volume alone doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t make changes. It’s great for lots of users. How can we improve this experience even more?”
Creating a learning culture to improve service
Ultimately, all three leaders agreed that embracing change and a culture of learning is essential to continually improve customer experience.
“We must embrace learning in whatever form,” Raley said. “Be curious, seek to learn and seek to understand. Don’t think you’ve got it all figured out. And it’s a challenge. Across my organization, and more broadly on the government side, it’s very easy to get kind of trapped in, ‘This is the way it is.’ Be open to learning because there’s a lot more ways to do it faster out there.”
McCament said CBP is always looking at new ways — and new technology — to make sure it’s staying on top of its national security mission, while also ensuring a seamless customer experience.
“We’re being responsive to the needs and recognizing the needs of the traveling public. At the same time, we recognize probably most would like to minimize their experience with CBP,” he said. “We want to maximize that experience and minimize their amount of time. But maximizing efficiency never compromises national security. And so, it’s a balance.”
Monroe said maintaining that culture of learning is essential for agencies to find new ways to provide better customer experiences.
“Constant listening, learning and applying what we’ve learned to make improvements — that has to be built into our processes,” she said. “It doesn’t end.”