The optimism of #Purpose & science of #design in forging #digital customer experiences! Opinions my own!

Birthday post, May 2nd 2020, 16.35pm.

Some of my thoughts on journey analytics and experiential  design here: https://tinyurl.com/y9yctre4 – but this is a slight adaptation to the public sector and current pandemic context.

Current #covid-19 #covid19impact times have been trying, but it has re-ignited shared #Purpose – we humans have a knack of coming together when it matters most. And now, every second matters! The world over has instituted (partial) lockdowns, the race for a vaccine is on and some countries are already approaching herd immunity; every nation has been scrutinising healthcare models and archetypes – to lockdown/partial or not – and how to grapple with the new/next normal –  the post pandemic world as we know it has been irrevocably changed. Larger questions loom, the resiliency of the citizenry and workforce, and how to resume new-normalcy in ‘phases’. One thing is apparent – that #Trust (trust indices) in our governments and public services have never been higher (or lower – for some Western parts of the world – some call it a reboot of the Asian century seeing how the East has been dealing, quelling and coping with the pandemic). With these all time high levels of trust, the citizens’ expectations of public services — be it customisation, delivery channels or innovation and efficiency levels — have also exponentially increased, superseding that of private sector services. More than ever, the question remains: how can governments address the diversity of needs to deliver a more citizen-centric experience for better social outcomes?

Citizens want to be empowered and involved in the process of developing and improving services and are more cognisant of their experience at each step of their interaction with public services. Across Southeast Asia, there are examples of countries already adopting a citizen-centric approach in improving citizens’ experience with public service touchpoints. 

In Singapore, the government is driving this approach by making citizen-centric service delivery a priority for all public agencies. For example, the government has introduced the “Moments of Life (MOL)” app – one of the strategic national projects under the country’s Smart Nation initiative – which places citizens at the heart of digital government services at key life moments, such as the birth of a child. MOL is a suite of services, which supports citizens’ needs at key junctures by integrating and bundling services across government agencies.   

To implement MOL successfully, extensive reengineering of existing processes is needed, given the many citizen services already in place. The challenge lies in moving these services seamlessly into MOL, while maintaining service quality, as well as security and trust in the system. 

Governments do not have an easy task (and that was pre-pandemic) – now it’s just Herculean. This becomes more complex when the multigenerational nature of citizens and their different levels of familiarity in using digital technologies are taken into account. For example, millennials and post-millennials, in particular, are generally more tech-savvy and vocal with tastes and preferences than earlier  generations. And they want to be informed, engaged and consulted on every social issue.

To enable citizens to live secure, purposeful and healthy lives, governments must put citizens at the heart of their thinking and policy-making through an outside-in approach. This requires listening to citizens, engaging and empowering them, and proactively designing and managing citizen experiences that will meet their current and future needs in a sustainable manner. That’s easy to say, but there’s a flip-side. Citizens first need to trust their governments to do what’s best for them, especially now. I’d argue the ‘level’ of trust has direct causality over the efficacy of the containment/return back to new/next normal. My observation: we’ve got about half a year till the vaccine is released at the end of 2020/early 2021; till then what’s top of mind for most governments, private sectors, GLCs and NGOs will be how we live, play and work – ever. Again. E.g. Microsoft Teams just added 31m users in next to no time. How do we reintroduce, and re-assimilate the workforce, transition. 

Architecting the citizen experience

Citizen experience is the sum of all interactions that individuals have with the government during their time living or working in a country, including areas for which a government has direct or indirect control or responsibility.

In designing the citizen experience, the public service will first need to be imbued with a “citizen-first” mindset and culture – we’ve something of a ‘perfect storm’ now during these pandemic times – everyone is rallying together. The ultimate goal is to improve service quality, promote transparent and efficient interactions, enhance public trust in the government, and drive better citizen outcomes – trust and transparency = bedrock of citizen experience. 

Working with clients in the public and private sector alike, we observed quantum leaps in digital maturity and adoption – nothing brings us together better, nothing fuels the will – the indomitable human spirit triumphs! Boards and C-suites have accelerated digital transformation; what took years took us weeks, all the latest (they were around for a while..) Live chat, chatbots and artificial intelligence on drawing boards all went ‘live’ – to serve the nation and citizens better in these trying times. Almost overnight, governments across the world have ‘caught up’ with the private sector in digital maturity, and well poised to take further leaps of faith forward. 

Against the pandemic backdrop, for the public sector at least, experience will overtake efficiency  as a key differentiator for citizens across the world. It’s also why citizens today expect increasingly transparent and responsive services from the public sector. See some thoughts, what SAP/EY/Qualtrics built together (and want to give back) on this here: https://tinyurl.com/yaqgn9gs. 

Direct government-to-citizen (G2C) experiences are paramount in shaping perceptions of and building trust in public-sector ministries and agencies. Every level of government can take steps to improve G2C interactions by updating their citizen experience philosophy and adopting modern technology – but, the shared #purpose and nested #purpose from ministries to agencies to stat boards must be aligned. Imperative – again, I guess that’s ‘easier’ now as every government in the world, all citizens, are aligned in ‘fighting’ #covid19. I digress, but there’s no ‘fighting’ this – that’s what Simon Sinek calls finite thinking. We will get through this, it’s just how fast and who comes up tops/faster. 

There’s no better time to implement the modern Experience Management  technology stack!  One word of advice – let the outside-in citizen journeys and trust indices decide how ‘best’ to lay these foundational  bricks (AI, live-chat, bots, NLPs, IoTs.. the list goes on) – never the other way around. All these ‘digital’ initiatives must wrap the Experience ambition and prioritised as such. No better way to let citizen trust shine through; they’re actually telling us exactly (it can get quite scientific – we need data, lots and lots of experience data and operational data – but where these two types of data fuses  that’s when magic happens) what needs to be done.

 

Practise extreme empathy

The citizen journey is how a person interacts with government services, from when they begin looking for information to the time the service is delivered. It’s vital to see these as ‘moments’ not of truth – but of life (see example here). Governments need to build services and capabilities pivoted on these moments! Every potential experiential improvement and necessitated impact should focus on nothing but these clean ‘moments’ – certainly cuts away all the ‘noise’ predicated with digital transformations (these broad terms mean nothing, unless we use the citizens’ lens on them). Especially now! Getting tax relief, funding for businesses to keep going, to weather through the storm, to build capability and skills ahead of the curve, to reintroduce the workforce – these all are key moments that everyone is looking at. 

Service transformation is next ; observations over the years – for magical experiences to persist and sustain, governments need to invest in transformation engines. It’s not about one app, not about one chat-bot, these are limited/pockets of success – but how do we scale, rinse and repeat? More importantly, how are learnings shared across all constituents for the amplification effect? 

Trust and Transparency

During these times, we actually need to over-communicate; governments that proactively inform  their citizens, or shall we say, conduct holistic testing per unit of population – we shall observe as economies reopen, how to model these 2nd and 3rd waves, and the efficacy of different tactics across the world in ‘flattening the curve’. 

One observation here – why channels such as Telegram have proliferated (besides Zoom, Teams and other remote tools). Information is ‘real-time’ and world leaders cement trust – but beware, without proper solutions the experience/trust for citizens deteriorate just as fast! Just as Steve Jobs and other iconic founders identified their corporations in the past – we have world leaders dichotomously building and cementing trust; while some/few erode it irrevocably. 

 

Insights to Action – apply XM data to decision-making / rubber meets road

Governments across the world needed to do contact tracing. And fast. Experience data e.g. online chatbots and queries re: Covid-19 updates might suggest/ideate that a whole of government issued app tapping location data could be a MVP. Operational data suggests that citizens don’t like the hassle beyond a few simple taps here and there (usage). Combining the two, experience and operational data births new innovations e.g. the TraceTogether app (see https://tinyurl.com/ybc86dsz). Singapore was one of the first few governments to release this ‘genre’ of contact tracing apps – many governments followed; now again, it’s about Trust – if we should institutionalise use. 

This is but one very simple example how super speed decision making impacts lives and helps our front-line and healthcare heroes. There are almost infinite combinations how these two types of data ‘fuse’ to create new possibilities to improve the citizen experience and in doing so, cement/rebuild trust.