Customer Experience Roundup 2015

This month, our round up focuses on customer experience (CX). As I was rounding up the CX events and articles we’ve shared on DigitalGov over the past year, I realized that CX touches all of the work we do. From Web to mobile to contact centers and social media, we need to not only be aware of our customers’ experiences but also respond quickly and make changes that will enhance their experiences.

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Predictions and Trends

Martha Dorris, Director of the Office of Strategic Programs in the Information Technology Service (ITS), and former Director of the Office of Innovative Technologies at GSA, wrote 15 Government Customer Services Trends for 2015 with some predictions about what will happen this year in the CX arena. Let’s see if her predictions come true.

We also recently had Stephanie Thum, Vice President of Customer Experience at the Export-Import Bank write Will 2016 be the Federal Government’s ‘Year of the Customer?’ Stephanie takes a look at 5 reasons why if 2014 was the year of planting seeds—and if this will be the year of germination and nurturing—then we can look to 2016 as the year in which agencies’ CX efforts may begin to truly bear fruit.

Successful CX Programs

Last February, we interviewed Stephanie Thum about customer experience and why leadership support at the highest levels is so important to successful customer experience programs, and since measuring the customer experience is super important she shared how the Export-Import Bank measures the transaction experience and finding CX metrics that matter.

Social Media

Social media is also a great way to reach customers and in this post we took a look at how agencies are leveraging social media tools as a meeting space for two-way conversations, and to even resolve user issues and deliver excellent customer service.

Personas and Customer Profiles

You should consider is developing your customer profiles to help you get to know your customer a little bit better.

In a recent Trends on Tuesday: The Total Market Approach, Ashley Wichman of the DigitalGov team talks about taking a multi-cultural approach to marketing and understanding the diversity of the consumer. Personas were cited as a helpful tool in this approach.

We’ve also had several other articles on personas including:

• A persona development case study with the National Cancer Institute and their Spanish language outreach
• An article with perspectives from the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services on using and creating personas and the challenges associated with this process.
• A USA.gov case study on using personas to better understand customers.

Events

In March, we hosted Dr. Cynthia Baur from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to explain the tool she and her colleagues built to bring science-based clear communication criteria to public communication products. She showed how they’ve used the criteria to improve audiences’ understanding of the agency’s information and improve their customer’s experience.

GSA is organizing a CX Community of Practice and we are working closely with them to coordinate ongoing training in this topic area and will host a kick-off event in June so stay tuned! Request to join the CX community or email Rachel Flagg