ࡱ> GIF #bjbj ".jjlZZZZZZZn   8V b n&h     &&&&&&&$(  *=&Z     =&XZZ hR&XXX FZ Z &X &XnXO$ZZ& ~ n V j$&h&0&$* *&XnnZZZZ Delivering Results: What Generic Market Research Cant Tell You By Pearson Government Solutions Youve been chartered with delivering new contact center services. Your constituency is elderly, and youre convinced theyll reject the new interactive voice response unit (IVRU), not to mention the new Web service proposed by a consultant. You dont invest much in either, and you staff up instead because you believe the callers will immediately opt out of self-service. Youre ready to go, right? For another program targeting a younger audience, the same consultant says that the new Web chat service you want to roll out wont be used. He cites data from the marketplace showing flat to negative growth in this channel. And he tells you, it will cost 2 to 3 times more to provide the service. You train a handful of customer service representatives (CSRs), write a press release announcing the service, and hope your consultant is right. Right? Wrong! Citizen service expectations are evolving across all demographics. Trying to outguess what citizens of all ages, socio-economic strata, and locations want is a dangerous strategy. In this article, we address five major drivers for delivering on customer expectations in todays environment, as well as two case studies. Both case studies show that multi-channel delivery can be a cost-effective solution for meeting the increasingly high standards citizens have for service from their government. Five Drivers to Ensure Success 1. Really know your audience. Though a given program may be targeted for one segment, the actual base may extend well beyond that demographic to include friends, family members, associations, legal entities, and other interested third parties. Allow careful analysis and segmentation to help drive your approach. 2. Know your stakeholders. Identify the often competing values of each stakeholder group for your program upfront. Agencies may place a premium on cost and meeting a stringent budget allocation; end users may value speed, accuracy, and channel selection; CSRs may value professional growth opportunities. 3. Involve your stakeholders. There is a direct correlation between the depth to which you understand and involve key stakeholders and your ability to meet and exceed theirexpectations. Stakeholders must be part of each phase of the planning life cycle. Requirements analysis - Ensure your end users know what service options are available to them and how they balance personalization vs. privacy. Use focus groups and surveys to prevent high visibility mis-steps downstream. Understand barriers to participation for new channels. Concept of operations design - Cookie-cutter approaches can be a recipe for dissatisfaction with end users or CSRs. Center the design effort on the stakeholders; their involvement fosters ownership and satisfaction. Transition planning - Careful planning is key to ensure seamless transition. Compressed timelines place a greater emphasis on risk management and continuity planning. Testing - Engage stakeholders in acceptance testing. Use pilots and focus groups to fine tune your new offering how to scale it, reduce costs and improve acceptance rates. Positioning - How you communicate the new service determines how well it will be received. Look for opportunities to leverage industry partners and other agencies in joint marketing efforts. Be sure that stakeholders understand when, where, and how any change will affect them. Feedback - Focus groups, service observation, and IVR, Web and outbound surveys provide opportunities to retool and reinforce. Collect satisfaction data in a way appropriate to each channel to gain support, ownership, and future vested interest. 4. Juggle conflicting demands of increasing citizen expectations and cost control. Creative, collaborative cost control strategies can help you do more with less. Leverage seasonal workers and remove single channel, stove-piped staffing models. Review tier 0 or pure self-service options with stakeholders to enhance adoption. For outsourced contact centers, consider transitioning to a performance-based or share-in-savings business model to remove risk, self-fund technology innovation, and use your industry partners inherent profit motive to your advantage. 5. Measure, measure, measure. The old adage that you cant manage what you cant measure rings true, especially when implementing new service channels. Establish baselines with objective performance measures. Incorporate feedback and allow measurements to drive behavior and change. Test new ideas within the context of return on investment, using your performance data to help build your business case. The following represent two examples where government agencies have applied the above methodology to achieve striking results for their stakeholders. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Open Season Annuitant Express and Open Season Online When OPM wanted to take its paper-based enrollment program to a new level, they focused on ways to achieve better, faster, more accurate service for their annuitant base. Natural concerns surfaced with discussion of a new IVR option: high program visibility on Capitol Hill; vendor access to sensitive information; and perceived resistance to new technology. Focus group partners from OPM, the National Association of Retired Employees (NARFE), annuitants and Pearson were consulted for concept development and testing and proposed a pilot for toll-free IVR for enrollment changes only. Annuitants were surveyed after one year. The IVR service received a 95 percent approval rating, with 84 percent requesting additional IVR transaction options. As a result, services expanded and usage increased dramatically. Yearly post-project reviews later indicated a desire to implement Web service. Interest went beyond the annuitant population to include a more youthful demographic of friends and family. The same technology concern perceptions were disproved by annuitant- provided feedback via Web comments: 90% indicated the site was easy to navigate and 91% indicated it was easy to understand. OPM Federal Employees Annuitant Open Season is no longer a manual process. Annuitants now handle three quarters of their transitions through automated means. The bottom line: better service, lower costs. Department of Education Public Inquiry Contract (PIC) As with OPM, services provided under PIC have expanded through stakeholder involvement and earned trust. Through a combination of feedback mechanisms, the agency identified three key needs: Combining two separate 800 numbers into one for ease of use Introducing or enhancing new delivery channels: e-mail and Web chat Lowering costs and improving operational efficiencies Combining the two 800 numbers had the net effect of serving the other two goals. The successful 800 number integration and underlying infrastructure reduced referrals, allowed for staff cross-training, and enabled the more efficient use of facilities. This saved the government millions of dollars each fiscal year while increasing service levels and multi-channel capacity. Highlights include adding: IVR self-service to enable 1.7 million self-service contacts annually Email handling enhancement and cross-training of staff to accommodate a 54% growth in demand A Web chat infrastructure to reduce total program cost and handle 49% annual growth Bilingual services for CSR-assisted, IVR, email, and Web chat interactions Answers to frequently asked questions on the Web and the IVRU for low cost tier 0 options The program has seen parallel increases in customer satisfaction ratings and CSR satisfaction. In the end, your audience may surprise you. Dont try to outguess your audience ask and involve them. New citizen expectations lead to new cost challenges. Creative operational and business models can reduce costs in ways that stovepiped staffing and labor hour costing approaches can never do. For more information about Pearson Government Solutions, visit  HYPERLINK "http://www.pearsongov.com/" http://www.pearsongov.com/. 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