NZ public sector agencies MUST become “citizen-centric” in order to deliver 21st century services
Posted by: Clay Nelson, Relationship Unlimited Founder
When many people think of Salesforce they just think of CRM, Sales and the PRIVATE sector. I suppose in fairness there is “Sales” in the name, but boy, has it been a long time since this was applicable.
Today government cloud solutions from Salesforce are completely revolutionising the capabilities of the public sector, just as they have for years in the private sector.
Citizens today are online and connected, and they expect services to be delivered how they want, when they want. They expect the public sector to deliver them the same high-quality service and experience as they encounter in the private sector.
Citizens are demanding more from government
Today’s citizens demand more from government services. They want self-service and 24/7 access. Among other things, they want to be able to easily apply for permits, or services, log issues, or access health information online.
The list of citizen expectations keeps growing, channels and mediums for engaging and communicating keep changing and expanding constantly.
Which means that innovative governments are embracing the service model of business and the private sector, by seeing and treating their citizens as customers and putting them at the centre of everything they do.
Becoming “citizen-centric”
Salesforce Government Cloud helps public sector agencies meet this changing demand by allowing them to be more responsive, efficient, trusted and “citizen-centric”.
By providing all the functionality needed to deploy modern tools and achieve a single view of the customer/citizen, Salesforce Government Cloud enables agencies to deliver higher quality outcomes – faster.
What Does Salesforce Government Cloud offer New Zealand’s public sector?
A fast, scalable, easy and open platform
With zero software install or hardware management, immediately available on any device without any extra code or programming, Salesforce is fast and scalable, whether delivering 10 thousand transactions, or more than 10 million transactions per day.
Innovation
Always the latest version of Salesforce, with customer-inspired and driven enhancements, easy point and click development, and access to millions of developers and APIs to connect any system.
Trusted
A secure environment, with global privacy and security compliance and transparency through publicly-available https://trust.salesforce.com/en/
Digital service delivery
The ability to manage the lifecycle of a digital transaction from online self-service, through to internal assignment, assessment and reporting. Check out this video from Salesforce for more detail on digital transaction lifecycle.
Regulatory processes
With proven expertise in areas such as; online registration, assessment of eligibility, audit, investigation and renewal, Salesforce helps government agencies optimise regulatory processes, for more efficient, connected and transparent workflows.
Human Services
Human Services often involve complex long running case management where it is important to be able to have a holistic view of the client, their relationships with other people, as well as understand the other external service providers who assist with the case.
Bridging the Gap
So clearly Salesforce is much, much more than “just CRM for the private sector”.
Salesforce is in fact the future for public sector services and can make all of government more innovative, responsive, effective, and above all, efficient.
Trust is critical in the successful provision of online government services and citizens are setting the bar high when it comes to the role experience plays in that. All of this means that governments have an imperative to act fast on enhancing customer/citizen experience in their online services to build and leverage that trust.
However, for many agencies, bridging the gap between where they want to apply resources (such as innovation and efficiency) and where they are compelled to (such as maintaining costly legacy IT) can often feel like a bridge too far.
To bridge this gap, my advice to agencies is that they should start small. By starting small agencies will build capability and confidence. But start now, starting now and starting scalable will close the gap before it gets too deep and will create the preconditions for future success.
If your agency is looking to start their citizen-centric journey and would like a free demo session on what Salesforce Government Cloud can do for your organisation, then get in touch the team at Relationship Unlimited today.
