Federal government agencies are under pressure to deliver on their mission more efficiently and effectively. One of the key markers of success is an agency’s ability to reduce costs without impacting the overall quality of service delivery. The demands for improved efficiency and service delivery are happening alongside significant growth in AI-powered innovation. Agencies no longer have to wait for the technology that will drive efficiency, lower expenses, and scale effortlessly, these tools are ready to be put to the test in a proof of concept today.
Evan Davis, Executive Managing Director of Federal Growth at Maximus, has assisted many agencies in moving from legacy systems to a modern technology stack and has unique insights to share with government IT leaders. “Federal government agencies are at an inflection point,” he said in a recent conversation. “Investments in service delivery platforms are finally beginning to pay dividends in that they finally have enough data to not only train systems to improve customer experience (CX) but also enhance service delivery by identifying inefficiencies and assisting in making processes more efficient.”
However, as with all significant steps forward with technology, there are a few final obstacles that must be overcome before the cycle is complete, and the next generation of technology is considered fully deployed. Davis noted three areas for agency IT leaders to focus on during this transition period. The first is how to manage winding down legacy systems, the second is how to create a single source of truth for their data, and the third is system consolidation. “Agencies are sometimes deterred from taking that final step forward in their modernization journeys because of legacy technologies and the heavy lift that comes with sunsetting them,” he explained. “However, today it’s possible to modernize the front-end user interface with APIs while maintaining an existing system on the back end.” Not only does this approach minimize disruption and deliver service improvements to citizens more quickly, but it also saves agencies millions of dollars and man-hours completing unnecessary work.
Equally, creating a single source of truth for agency data that can be used across multiple platforms – from website to chatbots, voice bots, and call centers – is critical not only to delivering a better customer experience to citizens, but also enable the agency to contain costs. “If an agency can create a single source of truth for its data, that data can then be used to fuel the website and FAQs, train chatbots, voice bots, human agents, and as a basis for all other citizen-facing interactions,” Davis explained. “When every system and person in the agency works from the same information, then it’s a much shorter, quicker, and more successful journey to advanced tools and systems like AI and automation, where the cost and efficiency savings really accrue.”
How does AI and automation drive cost savings for agencies?
According to Davis, the significant savings come from reducing waste by improving processes quickly and with better outcomes. “Today, ensuring quality monitoring of call center agents is a costly and painfully slow process,” he shared. “Monitoring each agent’s calls at present is limited to random samplings of recorded and live interactions. Because the whole call can’t be recorded, transcribed, and analyzed, there’s ample opportunity to miss issues because they’re not picked up in any single sampling. But now with access to full transcripts and real-time analysis, AI can perform quality monitoring on all calls, identifying anomalies, errors, and training opportunities. The call transcript can be analyzed by agent, or by type of call, and meaningful, productive training provided to prevent poor service from becoming entrenched, or the costly cycle of agent attrition and replacement from setting in.”
Behind the scenes is another layer of technology essential to this retooling of agency work. “All of these incredible tools depend on the cloud,” Davis shared. “Federal agencies were quick to embrace the cloud for many reasons, from the security assurances of FedRAMP to the efficiency of as-a-Service delivery, agencies are no longer standing up physical instances of call centers because cloud-based call centers can scale up and down in an instant to cope with seasonal or event-based demand.” Moreover, a cloud-based model means that an agency can enable an innovative project quickly, piloting something new without assuming a significant technology investment or exposing the agency to heightened risk.
Davis shared an example from a recent government agency engagement he led. The agency experienced seasonal call surges, which disrupted normal agency operations, resulting in long wait times for citizens seeking agency advice. “The federal agency we were supporting was prone to experiencing surges in call volume, where 10,000 additional callers were in the queue waiting for assistance,” he explained. “We were able to train and deploy over 500 work-from-home customer service representatives (CSRs) using a digital call center technology to handle this additional call volume without needing to wait to find suitable real estate or engage in slow, paper-based training, all because we were able to use the latest technology deployed in the cloud.” The engagement’s success metrics were impressive. The first round of 500 customer service representatives was added within 5 days, and an additional 3,200 CSRs were fully deployed by the 30-day mark of the engagement. These CSRs responded to 70,000 calls a day during the surge period, covering gaps, improving service delivery, and building, resulting in high satisfaction ratings.
As the costs of delivering on the mission continue to rise for the federal government, agencies will need to focus on efficient service delivery. “Being able to solve citizen inquiry in one phone encounter, or drive collaboration across agencies to ensure seamless service delivery throughout a citizen’s life, is the purpose of the next generation of mission-focused work,” concluded Davis. “Federal agencies don’t need to wait to get started on reducing costs and delivering on the mission efficiently. The tools, like cloud and AI, that enable efficient and cost-effective service delivery are available today, and as a trusted partner, Maximus is ready to support agencies as they embark on the critical work of system integration and automation.”