Developing customer experience by learning from each other
In a good customer experience, you experience what you have expected. A good customer experience arises from interaction, and it is based on the impressions and feelings felt by customers when they are dealing with representatives, services and channels of an organisation.
Government agencies have been working for years to enhance customer experience. In early 2020, an unofficial customer relationship network was spontaneously established to help in the work. The blog by Jaakko Rinne, Customer Director of the Finnish Food Authority, marked the start of the process.
“After that, I was contacted by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare and other actors, and Anna Lauttamus-Kauppila from the PRH also explained what the work involves. It became clear that even though government agencies are different we are all facing similar challenges,” notes Rinne who has become aware of the lonely nature of the work.
Officials responsible for customer experience in about twenty government agencies have joined the network. They meet between three and four times each year to discuss projects and good practices in their agencies. Benchmarking events are also held. Members of the Teams group are quick to share experiences on such matters as methods to measure customer experience and factors impacting them.
Incorporating customer experience into the objectives guiding the activities
“In addition to peer support and learning from others, being a member of the network also helps you to understand what customer experience is, and how important it is to manage it, and that it is particularly important to involve the customer in the development work by means of service design. There is also a lot to learn in the way in which the outputs are put into practice,” adds Rinne, summing up the results of the cooperation so far.
It is stated in the Finnish Food Authority’s strategy that the agency develops its services in cooperation with its customers.
According to the strategy, to achieve success in this area, the agency is encouraging its personnel to use their own customer contacts and other contacts established by the agency so that customers can be involved in development projects.
At the PRH, this is stated in the agency’s strategic goals as follows: “Our customers succeed”.
“Over the past few years, we have invested heavily in multi-professional cooperation within the agency, with external suppliers and also with other government agencies. Our customers are now involved in the development of our services in many ways,” Lauttamus-Kauppila explains.
“We have also enhanced our own service design expertise and customer competence. In addition to focusing on internal development work, we are also well-placed to expand customer understanding in the customer relationship network in cooperation with other government agencies, and all this can be done in an extremely inspiring manner,” she adds.
We can achieve more with less when working together
According to Joonas Kankaanrinne from the Digital and Population Data Services Agency, in addition to coaching, cooperation also teaches us to appreciate our own work and to find solutions that could be of help to others.
“I myself collect point-like observations to build my own situational picture. It is great to see how passionately many government agencies approach their work. For example, I admire the way in which the Social Insurance Institution of Finland segments its customers so that when solutions are sought consideration is given to the customer’s life situation.”
Digital customer experience requires multi-faceted service chains
Customer experience is increasingly becoming a digital experience. To develop it, we need more than digitalisation of forms. We must find digital paths that are easy and reasonable from the customer’s perspective.
“Getting feedback and choosing the right moment to request it are challenges all actors are facing. The experiences of building a monitoring mechanism and the knowledge whether a solution has helped a government agency to identify its customer experience are important and valuable as peer information,” Kankaanrinne notes.
Rinne points out that government agencies must internalise customer experience and view it as a cross-cutting theme in the same way as accessibility and information security. Lauttamus-Kauppila agrees.
The work of the customer relationship network is in its early stages and according to Kankaanrinne, customer experience is like a repaired jacket. It can always be modified and will never be ready.
Finnish text: Päivi Helander
Photos: Nina Kaverinen, Finnish Food Authority, Digital and Population Data Services Agency