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Citizen experience: A top priority for the Welsh Government
With customer experiences overtaking price and quality as a key differentiator for organisations, public sector organisations in Wales are being challenged with improving services to their citizens to meet their ever-changing expectations.
The Connecting Wales platform aims to deliver on citizen experience goals through cutting-edge technology, connected employees and a seamless experience.
What is Customer Experience (CX)?
Customer, or citizen, the experience is the perception a customer gains of service from all the dealings they have with an organisation – from quality to service, from digital or face-to-face exchanges to delivery and complaints. It’s the sum of all interactions between an organisation and a customer.
With advancements in technology and culture with platforms such as social media at citizens’ disposal, good customer experience is now more important than ever. The news of bad customer experiences travels fast and negative attitudes can result in lack of trust in services.
Improving Citizen Experience in Wales
With the Social Service and Wellbeing (Wales) Act and the government’s strategy to have 1 million Welsh language speakers by 2050, expectations of Welsh citizens are going to continue to evolve.
The Welsh Government have acknowledged there is a significant gap already between citizen expectations and what public services can currently deliver. Improving citizen experience means allowing citizens to self-serve where they can, offering a variety of communication channels and getting citizens the right help at the right time.
The pressure is already on to improve public services and expectations continue to rise in Wales, Connecting Wales is here to help. Backed by the Welsh Government, the Connecting Wales platform was built to cater to the diverse expectations of citizens, all then while being a future-proof solution to enable you to deliver consistently exceptional citizen services
New technology to drive exceptional CX
Digital technology has helped to raise expectations of citizens partly because of the speed and convenience of online transactions and interactions, as well as a raft of self-service features which citizens have no trouble using.
With the increasing availability of new, innovative technology services have become almost instant. The standard of citizen expectations is now higher than ever. Quick resolutions to problems through a diverse range of communication channels are not just vital from an organisational operation perspective, they are expected by citizens.
What do citizens want?
Citizens know what they want and have higher expectations than ever before.
Diversifying your citizen touchpoints by enabling technology such as speech recognition, artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots can be an effective way to quickly resolve issues without putting too much strain on your contact centre. Technology helps by minimising long call waiting times, enabling citizens to resolve issues themselves and educates them on how to resolve issues themselves when they can.
The use of AI, chatbots and other advancing technologies can be a simple and cost-efficient way to offer convenience to citizens and improve overall citizen experience. All the while allowing your agents to dedicate more of their time to citizens who require additional support.
If that’s not possible then they expect longer, more convenient opening hours.
Citizens have less tolerance for lack of available contact and support when, where and how they want it. They expect a swift response to their queries or problems.
They are generally happy for their data to be used to ensure they are dealt with as individuals not just as ‘another citizen’, and for their previous history and preferences to be known so they can be offered assistance based on their habits and background. That means agents need access to past interactions and details.
They also assume that contact centre agents have visibility of their previous exchanges using various methods of communication.
Nearly two-thirds of people change their contact channel depending on where they are and what they are doing at the time. But they expect the same, consistent service no matter how they get in touch.
If citizens don’t get what they want they’ll complain, and quickly. They also have high expectations about that service too.
How Connecting Wales Helps
A platform tailor-made for the Welsh public sector that ensures citizen services are convenient, speedy, personal and frictionless.