5 Myths of Customer Experience for Government

Federal agencies are investing to make sure that citizens are the focus of federal service design. As directed in the President’s Management Agenda to focus on “improving the customer experience of federal services,” agencies are incorporating commercial trends and technology, developed over the last decade, to make products and services as user-friendly and easy to consume as possible.

Here are the 5 myths of customer experience (CX) for government organizations—and the reality.

Myth No. 1: We typically use CX for external-facing customers.

The Reality: Your organization can use the same CX concepts to drive employee engagement initiatives, too. A happy, productive, and satisfactory culture inside an organization permeates through those delivering services. For any enterprise that has customer-facing employees, ensuring their work experience is a good one is a must.

Myth No. 2: CX measurement should be the starting point of understanding your customer.

The Reality: While CX measurement is certainly a way to understand customer sentiment and experience, if you’re not asking the right questions—such as determining the emotional highs and lows—the answers don’t have as much impact. Using human-centered design (HCD) as the basis to understand the landscape, customers, and stakeholders allows the relevant and actionable questions to be posed. HCD should be an underlying strategy of all CX teams, bringing the mission and perspective back to the people that a product or service directly affects.

Myth No. 3: Build a journey map. It will solve all your problems.

The Reality: Journey maps are phenomenal tools, but they shouldn’t be the end goal of an engagement or project. Instead, focus on customer and business outcomes. Both can prove more valuable than journey mapping. Ask customer-oriented questions like “Who do your customers want to become?” and “How is your business helping customers achieve their goals?” Look at business outcomes such as retention, churn reduction, customer loyalty, and customer lifetime value. Build your journey maps to align internal stakeholders with a baseline understanding of customers’ perspectives, solicit additional customer feedback, analyze existing pain points and bright spots, or communicate new service concepts, interactions, and experiences. 

Myth No. 4: CX measurement is the key to CX improvement.

The Reality: Understanding the who and why of CX is crucial. But impact only comes when the insights are actionable and feedback loops are built in. An organization can’t launch a CX survey and expect improvement. Rather, it’s about dissecting the data and translating it into actionable service recovery and continuous program improvement.

Myth No. 5: We don’t need CX—we already review our data analytics.

The Reality: CX blends qualitative and ethnographic research with hard data, so your analysts and designers work side by side. HCD serves a multitude of purposes and should be used in tandem with CX. HCD discovery research informs the best CX tools to implement. In turn, CX solidifies and quantifies where HCD-driven ideation and prototyping can be best used.

The reality is, planning and developing with CX in mind is essential to implementing impactful, efficient services. However, there are many human-centered methodologies and approaches available to help your organization tackle tough challenges. With the right expertise, your organization can explore new solutions, services, and more—all with CX built in from the beginning.