When it comes to government experiences, local agencies tend to outperform both state and federal governments. But that doesn’t mean municipalities should stop striving for better CX in meeting resident expectations. This includes the frictionless interactions found in their consumer synergies—which have only increased since the pandemic. The dramatic shift to online services follows the switch to online interactions in the private sector. McKinsey & Associates' research predicts fifty percent of all digital customer interactions have moved online.
The pandemic has emphasized to the public how essential digital government services are to them. Positive experiences with government services have included seeking COVID case information from health departments, booking vaccines, applying for rental assistance, and so on.
So, how do local agencies continue to deliver digital services that surpass resident expectations? Part of the equation is partnering with a suitable systems integrator who will provide the right combination of products and services. Here are a few examples:
The City of La Quinta- Headed by its forward-thinking City Clerk, Monika Raveda, and while amid a city building boom, Ms. Raveda knew a horizontal approach for managing records management and public records requests would be most convenient for residents, developers, and engineering and construction firms. Thus she developed The Hub, which is a powered by Laserfiche, one-stop, shop for permitting and business licensing.
The City of Santa Clarita- has leveraged its Laserfiche implementation to support its Rental Assistance Grant Program. IT and the Program Manager teamed up for a quick turn-around and delivered an online form application with approval workflows and reporting created in Laserfiche.
The City of San Mateo- delivers community records requests using Laserfiche. Right now, they are heads-down on their implementation, but as many other Laserfiche clients do, San Mateo employs Laserfiche’s excellent search functionality.
Overall the trend for local governments is to solve minor, impactful resident services and then scale over time to uncover which services are well-received. Experts in this area generally recommend rolling out resident services in three phases.
Observe- Agencies must analyze and attempt to view the customer journey holistically. Often, replicating the current journey only fosters inefficiencies. Working with an experienced government integrator is vital as they can bring lessons learned from other projects.
Start the redesign- The purpose of this step is to carefully redesign the most impactful elements and gain some quick wins through easy fixes. Such fixes could include redesigning part of a business process or implementing a digital solution that can plug into the existing IT environment. Since content drives process logically in most government workflows, workflows and BPs should be built with an ECM, such as Laserfiche.
Implementation- This undertaking may seem daunting, especially for large agencies with entrenched working methods. The key is not to relegate CX to a small set of roles but instead to embed customer centricity across all functions.
