Qualtrics recently published the 2023 Government Experience Trends Report, which shows that government leaders are struggling to understand the gap between expectations and experiences for both customer experience and employee experience. The survey was global, with nearly 8,000 consumers and over 2,000 employees across 27 countries providing feedback.

Dash Research interviewed Dr. Sydney Heimbrock, Chief Industry Advisor for Government for Qualtrics, to dive into a few of the report findings, and get her thoughts on priority areas.

Trust Issues in Government Agencies

Government agencies are underperforming all other industries in the key drivers behind customer experience, including trust.

“Customers don’t trust their governments. Why? Because it’s too hard to find the services they need, and the overly complicated procedures and requirements make it difficult, and sometimes impossible, particularly for marginalized groups to succeed in getting help,” says Heimbrock. “This is an issue as trust is really the foundation for everything else. I like to think of it as the glue that really holds everything together.”

Heimbrock shared that this is an area where improving the quality of interactions and leveraging opportunities to listen regularly and more broadly will prove effective. “Many customer/government interactions are now digital, and it really can be a simple thing to simply capture feedback during that touchpoint,” says Heimbrock. Moving toward open ended listening, empowering governments to do more social listening for wider and deeper data gathering, will be important strategies. “Deploying tools to get indicators of where problems are emerging, allowing government agencies to be more proactive, instead of reactive, is a goal agencies should work towards.”

Listening Abilities Must Improve; Action is Key

Seventy-two percent of those seeking government services say that government organizations must do a better job at listening. This is the highest total of any industry studied.

Dash asked Dr. Heimbrock her thoughts on which feedback channels were gaining in importance and which priorities already labor and budget stretched government agencies should focus on: “The adoption of different feedback channels is moving quickly, and the pandemic is accelerating it. Digital is the obvious one. There are also contact center interactions. This is a really frequent channel for certain demographics who might not have the access or confidence to interact via digital channels.” Heimbrock pointed out that agencies deploying deeper listening strategies in contact centers will have access to an information flow that will uncover issues and challenges that can be supported and acted on in real time with automated workflows.

Moving from data to action is key. “Agencies need to focus on listening with the intent to drive action. If you don’t do anything with what people are telling you, it will backfire,” says Heimbrock. “Agencies need to listen, understand, AND act. Closing the feedback loop with action is key here – it will result in time and money savings as well as making an organization more empathetic, responsive, and effective. Additionally, training employees on the principles of human-centered design not only helps ensure government programs and services are created to solve real human needs, it also helps re-engage employees, connecting them more closely to the people they serve.”

According to the Qualtrics data, there were some areas of CX improvements following President Biden’s federal CX Executive Order in the areas of access and ease of use following the digitalization of more services.

Australia Shows Impressive Government Experience Progress

The global study showed some countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia and Japan, tending to do a bit better on experiences. This was not surprising to Dr. Heimbrock, as she views Australia to be a trendsetter and global innovator in EX and CX. “Qualtrics has worked closed with New South Wales (NSW) and has helped them move towards the gold standard of CX, which is seamless cross journey orchestration.” 

Coming out of the struggles people faced post natural disasters such as fires and floods, NSW has implemented “Tell Us Once” which is a customer service portal for the government that makes access to resources simple. In a time of deep need, people can put in their information, just once, and the programs and benefits they can tap into are automatically pushed to them.

“This is a really exciting success story,” says Heimbrock, “and it’s what the US government is reaching for.”

Government Employee Experience Needs More Focus

Employee experience is also challenging in the government sector. Employees shared that they are feeling burnt out (35%), and 40% say they do not care as much about their work as they used to. Other findings include:

• Only 57% of government employees reported their career goals can be met at their organization (down seven percentage points from last year), and only about half (52%) reported having meaningful career development discussions with their manager.
• Just a third (33%) of government employees believe their pay is linked to performance, 17 percentage points lower than the global cross-industry average.
• Less than half of government employees (48%) said senior leadership responds to feedback from employees, and just 47% said senior leadership values diverse perspectives.

Interestingly, government employees reported they intend to stay at their organization for more than three years (69%), compared to the cross-industry average of 64%.

“Employee Experience is something that needs continued attention,” Heimbrock says. “It’s really interesting what is going on right now – on the verge of a recession, but still an increased demand for employees. Government agencies need to understand that the pressure is not off to provide a positive experience. People still expect it, and there is such a tight connection between CX and EX, that agencies cannot lose focus on supporting their employees.”

Heimbrock pointed out the positive data point of the 5% increase in employees reporting they received meaningful recognition at work. “I know this is a slight uptick, but governments have done a lot of work in this area, and it shows that if you are intentional, and you make the investments, improvements are possible,” she says.

Certainly, this was an interesting conversation with Dr. Heimbrock which emphasized some of the trends Dash Research is also seeing in the market, such as the ways in which listening is providing the power behind optimal CX and the increased importance of the CX-EX link.