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Surveys conducted by governments, like census, identifying the child mortality rates, economic status of a community, etc. play an inevitable role towards helping the public sector prioritize their requirements. Government agencies need to understand the significance of customer experience across all industries and should do everything possible to provide improved services and delight citizens. We all know that customers have been served with exceptional services by several multinationals, be it in retail, or other marketing platforms. Companies are using the best customer experience management software to understand customer requirements clearly so that they could serve them better. Government agencies need to vouch for CX so that they could institutionalize it to gather better ideas plus opinions of customers.  

Focus on CX is the need of the hour for the Government 

If you have carefully observed your daily movements, it is constantly getting monitored by the government. Whether you are driving from one place to another, going through security checks at toll gates, railway platforms, airports, looking to start a new business and seeking loans from banks, or receiving support from the government for disaster or calamity related issues, it is the government that caters to your needs. As citizens look for effectiveness and trust to build a relationship of faith with their government, it becomes imperative for agencies to deliver according to the expectations of their citizens.  

Popular consumer surveys reveal that the popularity of government is lower when compared to private agencies in terms of customer satisfaction. One of the prime reasons behind the private sector scoring better is the customer experience software being used to gather customer feedback extensively. The main reason behind mass public dissatisfaction and retarded progress that leads to negative impact on legislation is ignoring CX by the government.  

Why government surveys face challenges and how they could overcome the hurdle 

The government agencies need to identify a fresh way of acquiring customer data as the current means of receiving customer information is incompetent. The surveys conducted through call centers and other legacy systems provide limited information and hence analyzing customer experience becomes a challenge.  

There are several hurdles and shortcomings evident in government surveys. As most of the government surveys are done through third-party vendors, there is a major obstruction in gaining clear visibility about the levels of customer satisfaction. Outdated and obsolete systems, technologies, budget constraints, and the government’s resistance to change are challenges in acquiring clear customer feedback. Almost all authorities or heads at the government agencies feel that government agencies should be more resourceful in their insights, research, and analytics and should level up to the services of private companies. Most private sector companies use sophisticated customer experience management software to understand customer insights better.  

The question that every government authority and senator feels is – how can government agencies overcome the hurdles and construct a complete 360 degree overview of the customer experience?  

Building a 360 degree view of the customer experience 

Government functions need to have a clear understanding of customer needs, beliefs, and the behavioral patterns s they function within a community.  

If the government is able to effectively map customer journeys, it would easily help in improving CX. If the approach is journey-centric, it helps the analyzing agencies prioritize their actions in an aligned manner.  

Fitting in customer’s shoes 

It is imperative for customers to be treated with empathy today. To understand customer needs, government agencies first need to fit into customer’s shoes to be able to understand who it is actually serving. While the agencies are not in a position to avoid private organizations (B2B customers – tough to handle) and are trying to cater to all as per the norms of the campaign, an average customer easily gets neglected as his/her requirements match with the complete customer segment. This makes it absolutely essential for the agencies to analyze the core segment and create a clear picture of the customer needs, their behavior, and beliefs within each of the groups. Customized feedback collection of customers helps in created better customer persona.  

Understanding customer journey better 

Government agencies need to realize that in understanding the customer’s lifecycle, they have to understand the customer journey as series of end-to-end experiences that are solely based on customers’ perspectives. If one wishes to improve customer experience, one would have to effectively map customer journey and realize its significance. The most vital point in mapping the customer journey is not focusing on touch-point satisfaction but satisfying the customer throughout the journey. However, there are times when individual touchpoints are performing better than the overall journey, where the satisfaction level is low. It’s only that a journey-centric approach helps government agencies towards efforts prioritization to help them move forward on the right path.  

Identifying the critical moments that matter 

As customers come with a specific set of preferences about the way they would like to be served, these choices are the key drivers that creating a huge impact on the customer experience and the satisfaction. Once the government agencies realize how important the key drivers are and that these form a huge impact on the customer experience and satisfaction, they could easily figure the way to elevate customer experience. At this juncture, it is important for government agencies also to adopt customer experience management apps, as they come with an inbuilt algorithm that can better cater to customer requirements. Here, the agencies can have safer communication with the customers and stay away from negative incidents as the companies working on CX software have years of extensive experience in creating better conditions and surveys that easily help in understanding customer needs and disappointment segments.  

Conclusion 

Once the government is empowered and understands customer sentiments better, the system can be more effective in creating survey data, as it has higher access to the citizen than any private organization. The private business in turn can build better future plans, gathering data from the government agencies without bothering about the demographics and other nitty-gritty of the society they are looking to survey.  

The gamut government survey customer information is far wide reaching than the ones done by private companies. It could be anything ranging from customer’s daily interactions, to the highly critical elements like their travel and criminal records. Hence, customer survey is a highly significant work for the government as they can provide more authentic customer info to the businesses and help in overall growth of the country.  

Chanakya Kyatham

Chanakya Kyatham

Chanakya Kyatham is a Senior Digital Marketing Manager at ParamInfo Computer Services Pvt Ltd and piHappiness. He is passionate about topics such as SaaS, productivity, Android and iOS, general technology, and business.

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