As governments have worked hard to digitise services in the wake of the pandemic, expectations from citizens and residents to receive a frictionless, multichannel experience have increased.
Government services agencies are increasingly adapting to operate under customer-centric and digital-first mindsets, with the ambition even to surpass service-centric industries such as banking and telecoms in their service levels and customer satisfaction feedback.
Government authorities can transform how citizens interact and transact with them by rethinking what experiences citizens expect from government services, revamping high-friction processes, and eliminating frustrating service loops powered by reimagined digital platforms and interconnected ecosystems.
But just like in any other industry, legacy systems and processes, siloed organisational structures, and a lack of a customer-centric culture and KPIs can make transformation efforts more complex while customer expectations increase steadily.
Rami Haffar, Principal Customer and Employee Experience at New Metrics, who is spearheading CX technology transformations across leading government entities across the GCC region, says: “One of the challenges customers and citizens are facing is that departments and agencies often seem to run independently, requiring citizens to repeat the same information as an initial step to access different services.”
A recent survey found that globally almost one-third of citizens (32 per cent) rank more use of digital technologies in the provision of public services as one of the top three priorities for governments to improve the quality of services.
As a result, the idea of a one-stop-shop and e-service portals is becoming a growing standard with customers and citizens, where connected services require only a login or ID check to access everything the citizen requires.
“But until that does indeed become the norm, the citizen experience will still need optimisation, and to do that, we need to start by understanding it.”
Haffar further says: “To begin redesigning the public sector experience, we typically look at the full journey by assessing the front-end stages and back-end processes, systems, and stakeholders cross-cutting across all government entities. We must start by identifying the data, system, process, and stakeholders’ internal and external silos that currently contribute to friction and frustrations in the citizen journey. In our work across the region, we have observed that the public sector has started embedding customer experience as a key strategic pillar as early as 2019, with CX investments doubling since then, largely brought on by the necessity of a pandemic restricting in-person access but dramatically increasing demand.”
“Many governments across the region have as a result established dedicated customer experience departments, invested in customer experience analytics technology, adopted innovation and design thinking methodologies usually deployed at high-tech firms such as Google, and invested in digital and self-service channels.”
Data backs up these trends, with research showing that the GCC nations account for three of the top four leading nations in the adoption of online government services today, with Saudi Arabia featuring the second-highest digital adoption with an average of 15.5 digital government services used in the past year.
This has been only surpassed by India, featuring an average of 17.0 digital government services used in the past year.
Citizens themselves have a strong appetite for greater engagement with their public services through technology.
With an elevation in customer expectations, the public sector is increasingly investing in bridging the experience gap by investing in the customer and employee experience.
Haffar sees these trends developing further in the region. He says that “The statistics are significant because the population of the GCC is generally quite young. In 2020, General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT) showed that 66 per cent of the Saudi population was under 35 — and this is mirrored across the region.”
“High adoption of digital services can be assumed to be greater in this demographic, but tailoring services to this age range is a very different proposition to catering to older generations. Differing needs, expectations — both now and in the future — and a completely different lifestyle are all factors.
“Appealing to opposite demographics is a difficult task and a challenge faced by the public sector as well as private companies all around the world.”
Digitally enabled citizen experiences are expected to become the norm by 2023. Private companies and government agencies alike will face a period of constant digital and process transformation in the following years.
The best preparation for any organisation and its employees to carry out this transformation will be to be ready for constant change.
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