Aanstaande zaterdag (17 juni 2023) presenteert Harald Pol samen met Tijs Timmerman op het AMA Frontiers in Service congres de eerste versie van onze paper “Public Services in Digital Transition: the customer perspective as an accelerator for digital growth”. Voor de liefhebber alvast een klein voorproefje van ons paper.
Digitization has become an integral part of the professional practice of public organizations. Organizations see the benefits of digitization: processes can be organized more efficiently and the customer experience can be optimized. The Dutch government is therefore also investing heavily in digitization. Nevertheless, it appears that the digitization of public services is proceeding more slowly than expected and public organizations still have a long way to go to digitize or even transform their services.
Several public organizations have submitted questions to Hogeschool Utrecht about the consequences of digitization for customer experience and customer relationships. That is why Hogeschool Utrecht started a two-year practice-oriented research project in 2020. In this project, together with a number of consortium partners, research was conducted into the question: “How can service-oriented public organizations use digitization in such a way that it not only contributes to the objectives of organizations, but also makes a positive contribution to the customer experience?”
In a design-driven research approach, public service providers involved in digitization, customer service and customer experience, have gained better insights and new opportunities to use digitization in the right way. In a first qualitative sub-study, we looked at the obstacles and pitfalls that organizations encounter. This research showed that the customer often occupies an important place in the digitization strategy of public service providers, but that these service providers do not have a clear picture of the specific wishes and needs of customers.
In two follow-up studies – a qualitative and a quantitative study among customers of public service providers – it was therefore investigated what triggers and barriers are for customers to encourage or limit the use of services. This research shows that the main reasons for customers for not using digital channels or products is that digital is perceived as ‘anonymous’ and as not always providing the specific information the person is looking. It therefore does not meet the specific needs of the customer.
The main conclusion of our research project is that for digital transformation to be successful, digital services must be made more personal and more proactive. In addition, digital services must contribute to achieving the goal with as little time and effort as possible. Our research provides a number of options (tested with the target audience) organizations can use to make their digital service processes more personal.
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