Experience Action

CX in the Public Sector

• Jeannie Walters, CCXP • Episode 117

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What happens when customer experience principles meet public service? Jeannie Walters answers a thoughtful question and explores how government agencies and public institutions can create exceptional citizen experiences despite not being driven by traditional profit motives.

The conversation begins with reimagining success metrics beyond customer acquisition and retention. For public sector organizations, value creation takes different forms—like operational efficiencies, higher compliance rates, and broader service accessibility. Jeannie explains how connecting back to purpose through an experience mission statement creates the foundation for meaningful improvements that align with public good.

Journey mapping emerges as a powerful tool for identifying friction points in citizen interactions. By examining specific processes with clear goals and scope, organizations can simplify procedures, humanize interactions, and clarify requirements—addressing common complaints about government bureaucracy.

The podcast explores practical strategies for co-creation with citizens, employee empowerment, and designing for inclusivity. Jeanne shares compelling examples of public institutions that transformed service delivery models to reach underserved populations, demonstrating that creativity and empathy can flourish even within government frameworks. Her insights on communication improvements, measuring meaningful metrics, and sharing success stories provide a roadmap for any public sector organization ready to elevate their citizen experience.

Ready to transform your organization's approach to citizen service? Listen now for actionable strategies that respect people's time, needs, and dignity—ultimately strengthening public trust and delivering on your mission.

Resources Mentioned:
Experience Investigators -- https://experienceinvestigators.com

Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie on LinkedIn! www.linkedin.com/in/jeanniewalters/)

MC:

Experience Action. Let's stop just talking about customer experience, employee experience and the experience of leaders. Let's turn ideas into action. Your host, Jeannie Walters, is an award-winning customer experience expert, international keynote speaker and founder of Experience Investigators, a strategic consulting firm helping companies increase sales and customer retention through elevated customer experiences. Ready set action.

Jeannie Walters:

It's the Experience Action Podcast. Guess what? We got another fantastic question from one of you. Let's listen in.

Listener Question:

Hello Jeannie, my name is Raminta and I work as a customer experience project manager at the Central Bank of Lithuania. First of all, I truly appreciate your LinkedIn learning courses and your podcast. They've been incredibly insightful and inspiring, and I have a question I'd love your perspective on. What would you recommend for public sector organizations that want to adopt customer-centric solutions and improve customer experience, especially considering that they are not driven by profit? Thank you very much in advance and best regards.

Jeannie Walters:

Well, first of all, thank you so much for your kind words and for your work in customer experience. It's really exciting to hear about how customer experience is becoming a strategic focus in public institutions, organizations, cities, states, everything and it's so exciting to hear that you're curious about this. So thank you for this question. Now, when we talk about customer experience in the public sector and that can include a lot of different things and this might be based on your region or your culture but essentially in the United States, we have things like public utilities. They don't have to earn customers right. Customers are just there using their electricity. Sometimes we have things that are run by cities or states, or the cities and states themselves, the countries that are serving. You know, it's interesting because there's so much movement around this, that recently at the Customer Experience Professionals Association CX Leaders Advance Conference, there were discussions about how do we include customer experience in government. So this is a hot topic and I'm proud to say that at Experience Investigators, we have worked with various institutions like public utilities, like cities and like public agencies, governmental agencies helping serve citizens and residents, not necessarily the traditional customers that we think of. So, yes, a lot of the ways that we value growth and we value things like retention within our kind of business acumen, we have to apply different standards when we are talking about serving citizens and people who aren't necessarily customers. So let's think about this in a couple of ways. One is we want to think about why is the institution there? What is the purpose of the institution? It's usually around some sort of public value. There is usually a purpose to it. So, for example, if you are working in the transportation department of your city now it might be easy to think, well, we want to put out more parking tickets or speeding tickets or something. But really think about why are you there? You're probably there to provide more safety to your citizens. You're there to make sure that things are easy to get around. But really connect back to what is the purpose of your organization and what is the public good. That's why everything's there. So get back to really connecting with that. So, just like I talk about with going back to your customer experience mission statement, that applies here as well.

Jeannie Walters:

Now, instead of using the word customer, you might want to use the word citizens or simply experience mission statement. What are we trying to do? How do we show up for people. Why is that important? How do we better their lives once we serve them? That's a really powerful question. So start with purpose. Start defining that. Then you want to think about what are we really trying to do and what are those friction points that they're running into?

Jeannie Walters:

This is where mapping the journeys can be so effective. We want to make sure we're not only mapping the journey for the citizen or the person that we're serving. We want to understand how does that intersect with the people within the public sector who are interacting with them. So look at how people experience the services that we offer. So there are key moments that you probably already know about. But if you're serving businesses, maybe they have to apply for a license and wait for approval. That's a key moment for them. Maybe you are sending out financial information that is critical for people to know. How are they receiving that information and how do you know that they're receiving it in the right way? How are they accessing support if they need help? All of those questions can lead you to really understanding where do you need to understand the journey more and how can you map it? So one of the things I always say about customer journey mapping, or any mapping is that we need a goal, a specific goal and a scope.

Jeannie Walters:

So, once you've kind of identified those friction points, think about what is the goal of mapping this. Well, look for opportunities to simplify. People are constantly saying it's cumbersome to deal with the public sector. What can you do to simplify it? What can you do to humanize it? How can you clarify the processes that are there? How can you make sure that people are following the rules because the rules are easy to understand. So there are lots of ways to really set the right goal around what you're trying to do, and you can tie that back to other organizational wins for the public sector. For example, if you streamline a process so that there is less need for people to visit an office, wait in line all the things that come with that, well, you're going to be saving expenses. Now, depending on what you're doing in the public sector, those expenses could apply to better things. Maybe you haven't been able to innovate your technology. What if you could streamline enough processes so you're not getting as many service calls? What if you can clarify why taxes and fees and license application fees, why they're important, so that people are more likely to pay them on time. When we start connecting those dots, it's less about, maybe, profit, but it's more about, hey, this helps us be efficient and meet the needs of those we're serving in better ways. So there are ways to connect to those types of financial results, organizational goals and simply making it better for the people that we serve.

Jeannie Walters:

And, of course, we want to do this in a co-creation way. We want to make sure we're including the people that we're serving. So some cities, some states, use something called voice of the citizen. How do we collect feedback at key points to make sure we are including them in this process? So this isn't just about surveys, but we want to make sure we are capturing things like emotions and how long are they waiting in line and what do they feel about that. So interviews can be really helpful here. Inviting citizens into creating what's next can be very helpful. Partnering with civic engagement platforms there are different associations and groups that can really help you connect to the people that you're serving. So get creative here. Look around. How can we co-create with the people that we're serving so that we get those insights before we put policies and processes in place to really deliver to the public?

Jeannie Walters:

And we also want to empower employees. You know we say sometimes that customer experience is everyone's business, and we mean that both at the macro level. Everyone in business, every business, every organization needs to think about customer experience and everyone in the organization needs to understand what it is. Because if they understand what this is what we're trying to do, then they can become experienced engineers. They can start looking around and thinking you know, why are we doing it this way? I have an idea, I have a better way. So allow that. Empower employees to really connect with either the experienced team, or maybe it's a suggestion box or something simple where they can say you know, we're doing it this way, but I think we could speed it up for the people we serve.

Jeannie Walters:

Those types of ideas and bringing that awareness to the forefront can really help any organization, but especially in the public sector look around and think about how are we going to do this better for our public? And that's where you can come in with things like an experience champion program. You can incorporate some experience metrics into team goals. You can really get those deeper insights and turn those insights into action, which is exactly what we need to do, and so we want to apply what we're tracking, our key performance indicators with the mission. And so if the mission is to serve people in a friendly and helpful way to help them live their best lives, well, it's hard to live your best life if you're waiting in line for two hours. So things like decreasing wait time, decreasing processing time that can actually help you live a mission like that, introducing and getting adoption around, things like digital self-service options can also help people get to what they need faster and in the way that is better for them more convenient, more mobile all of those things that people are asking for today.

Jeannie Walters:

And then we also want to really look at communications. A lot of the complaining from public sector, citizens or the public in general, it's about communication. How are you communicating things in a way that people can understand? So look at your communications. Can you make those friendlier, more open? Can you give more options for hey, if you get stuck here, if you need help, here's how you access support. That's another thing we hear in public sector that people don't know where to go when they have these problems. So make it as easy, straightforward and clear as possible as you're communicating, because if you can make these changes, you can start tracking things that tie right back to that mission. So if we're communicating more clearly, that means maybe people are paying those fees on time, maybe they're voting more, maybe they are depositing more into the public bank, maybe they are using less energy because they understand how to do that more efficiently. We can tie things back to experience metrics that align with that mission and then really in any organization we would say this but this is especially important when talking about the public sector we want to create inclusive experiences.

Jeannie Walters:

That means looking at really understanding, designing for accessibility and equity, and that is so important in the public sector. We want to serve everybody, so that means really including people who can help you with that conversation and design, making sure it's not just the physical spaces that we're talking about. It's making sure that everybody has equal access to the information, resources and services that you provide. Sometimes that takes being creative. One of my favorite examples of this is a library that basically realized that a lot of young parents couldn't get to the library during working hours because newsflash many of them were working, so they were missing out on a lot of the programs designed for young children. So the library started bringing the library to them. They had a service where you could invite a librarian to come to your home with a series of kids' books and really work with your child one-on-one. They also did group events on the weekends in parks and things like that where kids would be, so bringing it to them, making it more of their service in a way that worked for the very people they were aiming to serve.

Jeannie Walters:

We need to think about how do we include more people and what is it we're not seeing? What is it that we maybe are assuming that we need to invite those customers, if you will, into that conversation? That's where mapping, observation, customer interviews, that type of thing can be very, very helpful. And when you are working through this, just like any other organization, as the leader in experience. We have to tell that story. We have to make sure that we are sharing the wins with the people who need to hear that and in the public sector, that could include not only our leaders, but also our citizens, also the public. Make sure they're hearing these stories of impact. Make sure you are celebrating the wins as you get them.

Jeannie Walters:

So really, as we think about experience work in the public sector, a lot of it is bringing over those best practices from customer experience. It's just a matter of using a slightly different lens to figure out okay, what is it that would be success for us? So it might not mean more customers, it might not mean more retention, but it could mean more efficiency, greater efficiency. It could mean that we are living the mission. We are delivering to more people that we promised, that we are helping people understand and access the very services that are due to them that maybe they're just not aware of. So really, look for what are those things you can measure and what are the ways that effort into the experience can make an impact on really these people's lives.

Jeannie Walters:

It's incredibly important work and I think it's fantastic the number of people who dedicate their lives to this. We really can't thank them enough. This is incredibly important for everybody across the world to get what we need to have fresh drinking water and electricity and, you know, schools and all sorts of things. So we need to make sure that we are telling those stories in ways that people can really understand them. It's really about respect and empathy and inclusion, and I'm really excited about that.

Jeannie Walters:

So thank you for asking this question. For all of you out there. If you're curious, how can I ask a question? It's super easy. Just go to askjeannievip and you can record a voicemail for me. You can do it on your phone or your laptop. You can be anonymous or share about you like Raminta did. So we are so happy you're here. Thank you so much for joining us and I will see you next time. To learn more about our strategic approach to experience, check out free resources at experienceinvestigatorscom, where you can sign up for our newsletter, our Year of CX program and more, and please follow me, Jeannie Walters, on LinkedIn.

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Jeannie Walters, CCXP

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