This time last year Francis Maude, the Cabinet Minister said: “Britain is in a global race and that’s why we need to have modern, efficient, digital-by-default public services that are fit for the 21st century”.
However, I believe in the rush for a digital-by-default strategy many have created a digital-only strategy, and the public sector now runs the risk of losing its human face.
Organisations implementing digital strategies risk rendering themselves as impersonal. A successful strategy depends on the right combination of personal service and digital channels.
Most consumers are now using seven or more digital channels to communicate. They are no less ‘up close and personal’ in their authorship of the message, and they expect their correspondents to behave in exactly the same way.
Rushing to the polar extreme and digitizing all services creates an equivalent risk of customer alienation, therefore synthesis of the human and the digital is required.
A rise in the widespread use of digital communication channels by consumers has created easier access to services but has not diminished the expectation that organisations will respond in a personal way.
The core risk is that public sector bodies will assume that digitizing interaction decreases the need for human intervention, thereby alienating consumers.
We recently conducted a piece of research into the number of electronic communication channels that a consumer uses. We discovered that the average UK consumer has used more than seven electronic communication channels in the past six months. Amongst 18-24 year old the figure rises to 8.4 channels.
The figure is lowest in the 65+ age bracket, but even this age range uses 6.2 methods of electronic communication.
These statistics put most government organisations in the shade.
The explosion in social media platforms targeted at consumers in the past 10 years, and the ease of adoption are creating headaches for government as more consumers take to social platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter to seek help and air their grievances about poor service.
Furthermore, according to Forrester’s ‘Navigate the Future of Customer Service’ report, voice is still the primary communication channel used by all demographics, with 73 per cent of respondents using this channel to speak to an agent.
Different channels are more appropriate for different services and the web is just one channel which may or may not prove to be an efficient method for service delivery. Whilst digital is of great importance, ‘digital only’ customer service strategies simply do not work.
Councillor Sarah Russell, Cabinet Member for Business, Finance and Democracy at Derby City Council agrees: “Moving transactions to self-service digital channels creates efficiencies that can both contribute towards council savings targets as well as being invested in value adding activities for more vulnerable customers”.
She added: “Understanding the best ways to work with our customers on self-service digital channels means we can be even more efficient, releasing as much time as possible for those contacts where a human touch really makes the difference”.
For me, retaining human service and augmenting it with tech-enabled efficiency is by far the best model.
David Moody is the Head of Worldwide Product Strategy for KANA Software. He and his team have responsibility for the introduction and on-going success of KANA’s strategic solutions across all target markets including commercial and government.