Many federal and state government organizations have told us how difficult it is to develop a contact center that can keep up with the evolving communications demands of their constituents.

Ideally, citizens want to go through one point of contact to communicate seamlessly across government departments, collect current information about services they are eligible to receive, and receive fast responses to their queries which may come from a combination of emails, texts, form-fills, chat, social media messages, and phone calls.

So how can government contact centers provide a satisfying citizen experience that meets these increasingly challenging expectations?

Be open-minded to the benefits of updating obsolete processes and systems

If you work for a team that is tasked with developing a government contact center that will best serve your constituents, you first need to determine what aspects of your contact center operation should change. And of course, change is inevitable as technology evolves and new innovative solutions become available.

The best place to start your self-evaluation is to honestly assess if you are truly providing a quality citizen experience. Are you efficiently and quickly connecting people with the information they need? If there is room for improvement, there are solutions available to help your organization make the end-to-end citizen experience better than it has ever been – while also preparing to evolve in the future.

Carefully evaluate the offerings of technology partners

To generate the best results for your organization, you need to thoroughly evaluate the complete landscape of options presented by potential technology partners. Many companies are pitching products and services that are basically the same. Your organization – and your citizens – deserve better.

Titan Technologies specializes in providing fully automated, end-to-end solutions that can vastly improve your organization’s ability to respond to inquiries from citizens in need.

By working with Titan Technologies to integrate new solutions and processes into your existing systems, your contact center will smoothly handle steep spikes in calls, texts, and emails – while also saving money by scaling down appropriately when a surge subsides.

The right technology partner can help your organization provide a superior citizen experience by working with you to deploy these five strategic actions:

1. Activate Omnichannel Integration and Options

Citizens want to access services on their own terms, across phone, chat, virtual agents, social media, and other channels. By utilizing omnichannel integration, all requests are integrated on the back side, so they are not siloed in ways that prevent agents from accessing them quickly.

Without omnichannel integration, citizens are faced with the all-too-familiar experience of using outdated interactive voice response (IVR) systems which keep them wandering through seemingly endless mazes of prompts. Those days should be relegated to the history books, as new, better technology can provide a major upgrade to the citizen experience.

2. Update Business Processes

This step is paramount to improving the citizen experience. By examining your work processes and adhering to principles of the “Lean” philosophy of continuous improvement, you can provide not only better service for your constituents, but a better experience for your employees as well.

For instance, one of many examples is to rethink how backend business processes work to support people. You can evolve beyond depending on the same paper forms that have been used for decades for backend accounting. Omnichannel interactions need a different backend system, which can be implemented easily by the right technology partner.

3. Create More Complete, Integrated Pictures from Your Data

If your organization is like most others, you have countless data files in structured and unstructured forms such as reports, research papers, articles, studies, images, diagrams, audio, video, presentations, social media, web pages, emails, etc.

However, if your data is sitting in antiquated systems, then it is not integrated or easily accessible. And that can be a problem as there may be hidden value in that data that could drive future decisions. But with a modern data management platform fueled by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) technology together with Natural Language Processing and Natural Language Understanding (NLP/NLU) technology, your disparate data sets can be pulled together to form a more integrated, and useful “picture” of any number of subjects.

For example, you could generate a more complete profile of what type of government services a particular family might need, or a more thorough snapshot of a facility in need of repair, or even a more transparent breakdown of a military adversary.

4. Modernize Infrastructure and Cloud Applications

Your ability to provide a superb citizen experience may ride on how your organization can respond to constituents during situations that generate massive surges of communication requests. We live in an unpredictable world, and at a moment’s notice there may be a huge rush of interest from citizens who need answers, reassurance, and instructions.

The only way to deliver a satisfying level of responsiveness to your citizens is to upgrade your backend infrastructure so it scales for surges. By modernizing applications, you can scale effectively in the cloud and enable data sharing integration through new application programming interfaces (APIs).

5. Protect Citizens’ Personal Information

To gain and keep the trust of your constituents, you must protect their personal privacy. Unfortunately, as headline after headline reminds us, the digital world is rife with traps to expose the critical data of innocent people.

That’s why you need a technology partner that is well-versed in industry cybersecurity standards such as National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC). NIST standards are designed as a framework for federal agencies and programs that require stringent security measures. CMMC is a unifying standard for the implementation of cybersecurity across the Defense Industrial Base. The CMMC framework includes a comprehensive and scalable certification element to verify the implementation of processes and practices associated with the achievement of a cybersecurity maturity level.

CMMC Level 3 includes the 110 security requirements specified in NIST SP 800-171. The CMMC Model also incorporates additional practices and processes from other standards, references, and/or sources such as NIST SP 800-53, Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) National Aerospace Standard (NAS) 9933 “Critical Security Controls for Effective Capability in Cyber Defense”, and Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) Resilience Management Model (RMM).

The Bottom Line: Your reputation is too important to put at risk

The quality of your citizens’ experience can determine the reputation of your organization. To prepare for times of crisis, you need the most experienced, resourceful, and successful partner you can find. At Titan Technologies, we understand your mission, and we understand the mindset of the citizens who you serve. Our specialty is serving public sector organizations such as yours.

We can provide you with the same expertise that we have used to support federal, state, and local government customers such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), Florida Virtual School, Okaloosa County School District (OCSD) in Florida, and the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (FLDEO).

If you would like to discuss how your organization can offer the best citizen experience possible, contact us at info@titantechnologies.com.