To Improve Is to Change—to Be Perfect Is to Change Often: Part 2
In part one of this blog we reflected on how the challenge of delivering public services is occasionally increased by the advent of internal organisational change. This is something being wrestled with by over forty local councils and municipalities in New South Wales, Australia, which are being merged to form nineteen new organizations.
Their efforts will need to be planned carefully and involve both employees and the local community in the design of post-merger policies and services. This challenging exercise is not to be underestimated and must deliver a firm foundation for the changes that will be necessary.
It is clear that this will require the engagement of not only citizens, but also the employees of the new councils. But there is no more sure-fire way to lose that engagement than to make life so difficult for citizens that being a council employee becomes a chore, and consuming and delivering services more difficult than necessary, for longer than it needs to be.
If this happens, it will be the front-line enquiry and citizen contact teams that will feel it most acutely. However, the lot of those charged with managing the merger exercise and delivering the best possible services to the population of the new municipalities will also be considerably more difficult.
There are a wide range of solutions that can help the new councils rise to these citizen and employee challenges.
Customer Analytics can map citizen journeys, helping derive insights into what makes for successful and effective service delivery, and how differing service processes can be redesigned and merged to best effect.
Knowledge Management solutions can help employees (in the contact centre, back office or the field) quickly and reliably find the information needed to answer queries and process work. This is vital at any time, but doubly so when having to process enquiries according to multiple policies that have yet to be merged or redesigned.
And when new policies, procedures and service definitions are in place, Case Management—with scripting and next-best-action guidance—can help ensure that each interaction is dealt with consistently and in accordance with those new policies and procedures.
The discontinuity brought about by these reorganisations also offers an ideal opportunity to adopt a new approach to the delivery of many services, exploiting the preference of so many people to conduct business of all types using digital channels. We refer to it as “Digital First Engagement Management.”
Using capabilities from across Verint’s portfolio, Digital First Engagement Management empowers government organisations to take a “digital first” approach to service delivery; designing services from the citizen’s perspective and supporting both self-service and assisted-service as needed.
And throughout the whole merger process, and on into the future, best-in-class Community Forums,Feedback and Quality Management capabilities will keep you in touch with citizen’s views and encourage them to remain engaged in the process of building their new communities and services.
Change is often unwelcome and painful to work through, However, as Winston Churchill observed, the disruption it causes can also bring opportunities to improve; to remodel in a way that is better suited to the future—and ultimately the effective, efficient delivery of citizen-centric services.
The post To Improve Is to Change—to Be Perfect Is to Change Often: Part 2 appeared first on Customer Experience Management Blog.
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