Enhancing self-service solutions to reduce costs at every touchpoint

Effective digital transformations require full alignment of people, processes and technologies, particularly within public sector organisations. Nikki Powell and Becca Garside delve into this dynamic at contact centres, where evolving self-service capabilities not only reduce the cost-to-serve but also significantly enhance user experiences.

For many organisations in the public sector, the contact centre and customer service landscape has changed dramatically over the past few years. The pandemic certainly changed the attitudes and behaviours of citizens and has accelerated the shift away from conventional voice contact. In a similar way, the cost-of-living crisis has increased the volume and breadth of service user interactions for practically every area of public service. Accepting this new perspective, most will agree that self-service must be the way forward. After all, it’s an effective catalyst for increasing automation, reducing the number of ‘touchpoints’, simplifying processes and providing invaluable insight for more informed decision-making.

Successfully harnessing the principles and tools of self-service, however, presents its own challenges. Ensuring the team is the right size and has the capabilities and scope to meet the fluctuating demand and rising expectations of citizens are not the only considerations. And it’s not just a matter of handling routine enquiries. It’s also essential to minimise the cost-to-serve to reflect budget constraints while creating the required operational capacity, and to optimise accessibility and responsiveness for all complex cases or sensitive issues.

There’s no doubt that financial pressures and an understandable risk-averse mindset have impacted the ability of many public service providers to fulfil their digital transformation aspirations. It is also true to say that many organisations are still developing their understanding and awareness of the contact centre industry as well as the challenges presented by such service transformations. There is often a skills shortfall and great care is required to ensure effective integration with legacy systems and when transferring existing data onto new platforms.

Juggling cost savings and efficiency gains from automation, while also protecting the interests and value of the existing workforce through staff training and upskilling programmes, requires careful thought and management. Indeed, the real effectiveness of any digital transformation programme depends on finding the right balance between the rising expectations of citizens and a multitude of internal considerations - from personnel factors to the security and governance of data and technology.

Earning trust and confidence is key

Given such challenges, it’s hardly surprising that a degree of compromise has been a common theme in many public sector digital transformation initiatives. This often results in the introduction of partial self-serve capabilities, which can dilute service delivery targets and outcomes. It’s important to recognise that real efficiencies and consistently positive user experiences are not just dependent on the widespread use of self-serve capabilities. Initially, these outcomes require that citizens trust and feel confident that they can resolve their enquiry quickly, easily and fully on their preferred channel of contact.

Without a considered and comprehensive self-service solution, it’s nearly impossible for a contact centre to meet the rising expectations of citizens. Just one poor experience or the inability to use their channel of choice will undermine the trust of users and damage the uptake of self-serve. In such cases, the anticipated return on investment will fail to materialise, and the expected benefits will remain as elusive as ever.

Thankfully, the focus has shifted away from rapid deployment of new digital capabilities towards a more considered approach to online service provision, where quality and effectiveness are the guiding principles. There is still a long way to go. Technologies and expectations continue to evolve, presenting many challenges along the way to not only build (or rebuild) but also maintain accessibility and trust among all citizens.

Informed decision-making for any investment in digital resources and service transformation is essential, not just a nice to have. This requires a real understanding of potential and actual problem areas so that the appropriate steps can be taken to reduce manual processing of enquiries and to provide users with the options and opportunities to use their channel of choice.

Insight to plug knowledge gaps

The move towards an omnichannel experience is often easier said than done. Public sector organisations rarely have a direct relationship with technology providers that can assure security and proven reliability, versatility and scalability. In turn, those organisations leading the way in large-scale cloud service provision (hyperscalers) cannot be expected to understand the complexities, mobilisation costs, implications and unique operational requirements in different areas of the public sector.

Adopting the spirit of collaboration helps provide the insight and understanding needed to bridge these differences and fill awareness gaps. Such an approach allows an organisation to capitalise on insight and in-depth experience from across the public sector on one hand, and the detailed knowledge and capabilities of technology providers on the other. This will go a long way to establishing a clear ‘proof of concept’ and business case, as well as unlocking new funding opportunities for technology enablement, including from the hyperscalers themselves. Significantly, it enables an organisation to move forward with confidence as it fosters continuous improvement in a future-proofed contact centre service that is fully aligned with the evolving needs and preferences of citizens.

As noted earlier, technology underpins any move towards self-service or enhancement of existing self-serve capabilities, but the operational imperatives must always provide the guiding light. Assessing the effectiveness and efficiencies of existing processes and establishing clear priorities and problem statements will determine the opportunities for efficiency gains and the requirements for different types of user interactions.

This assessment will also pinpoint where process complexities can be simplified to minimise sticking points and delays and to reduce the manual processing of relatively routine or mundane enquiries. Equally, it will enable an organisation to establish a clear and progressive service transformation strategy that specifies where, when and how different self-serve options should be introduced to address specific problem areas and enhance service delivery.

Empowering citizens

Improving the satisfaction level of citizens is a common goal. It may be a case of providing customers with faster issue resolution or the opportunity to access support at any time of the day or week. Or it could be more about overcoming the risks and frustrations arising from inadvertent oversights or inconsistent responses from agents. Then there’s the pressure to reduce service delivery costs and improve operational efficiencies while at the same time increasing service flexibility and reducing the workload burden on agents. There are many self-service options available to empower citizens to find solutions to their queries and to help an organisation reduce its cost-to-serve and create the capacity to achieve target outcomes in both the short and long term.

Automated phone systems that utilise Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology efficiently guide citizens through menus, providing an initial layer of deflection for call flows into a contact centre. Similarly, conversational AI chatbots offer instant responses to routine enquiries. These tools are supported by a pre-defined knowledge base, allowing them to deliver rapid and comprehensive responses to simple service queries, such as address changes. This eliminates the need for repeated contacts, reducing the frustration and delays for users. This is not only beneficial for citizens but also helps to reduce the pressure on contact centre agents and increases the capacity of an organisation to provide prompt and more considered responses for more complex or sensitive interactions.

Developing scope for service enhancement

Once effective call flow management and core self-serve functionality are established and accepted by citizens, there’s plenty of scope to introduce additional channels and bot technology to drive further efficiencies and enhance user satisfaction through multi-channel and multi-disciplinary service provision. FAQ pages, knowledge bases, video tutorials, community forums, automated email responses and bot technologies are all tools that can be used to provide a layer of more comprehensive answers for typical enquiries or to direct citizens to other relevant resources and information. There’s also the opportunity to introduce mobile apps and secure online portals to help citizens manage their accounts, track the progress of applications and access detailed troubleshooting guides and other forms of service support.

Clearly, AI technologies will have an important role to play as organisations across the public sector strive to minimise their cost-to-serve. Conversational AI is relatively easy to manage and control and is quickly becoming well-established in most areas of the public sector. There’s still some understandable apprehension regarding the use of generative AI, particularly concerning service ethics and governance, as well as its high initial set-up costs. Nevertheless, as this landscape continuously evolves, the potential benefits of such technology cannot be dismissed lightly. Anticipated new legislation and the proven performance of AI in highly regulated industries will increase the appeal among public sector service providers, encouraging them to capitalise on the remarkable agility and speed of this constantly advancing technology.

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