Why CX Matters
New Yorkers deserve a government that delivers services efficiently and equitably and that places customer experience first in the design of public goods and services. A government that gets this right is one that will meet the service needs of people of all backgrounds and abilities and save people time – in so doing, increasing public confidence and trust.
Through customer-focused service delivery in New York State, the New York Experience Team is:
- Ensuring effective, efficient, and customer-first approach to all of our work on behalf of New Yorkers
- Designing and developing digital experience standards, tools, and resources that empower agencies to deliver better websites and digital services for their constituents
- Zeroing in on strategies to reduce the “time tax” imposed when interacting with government agencies
Guiding Principles
The New York Experience has defined fundamental objectives to adhere to when designing for interactions between New York State and any of its customers.
Guiding principles help align teams around what matters most and keep efforts focused on what is most important - the needs of New Yorkers. They drive conversations and help make more effective design decisions in projects.
- Design services with users, not for them
- Make services accessible and inclusive for everyone
- Simplify public-facing and internal processes to improve efficiency
- Use modern tools to meet New Yorker expectations
- Deliver smaller changes rapidly and continuously
- Empower state employees so that they can deliver
- Use data to drive decisions
- Share problems, ideas, and solutions
Terms to Understand
A common set of definitions helps improve the communication between leadership and those closest to the service. These are the basic terminology New York State agencies, vendors, and practitioners can use to describe the key events, stakeholders, and processes that impact customer experience.
- Customer - the individuals, business, governments, and organizations that interact with a New York State agency or program. New York State customers may include members of the general public, as well as State employees themselves. Customers may interact directly with the State or through one of its contracted vendors or a State-funded program.
- User - any customer interacting with a New York State website, application, call center, agency representative.
- User Experience (UX) - a component of Customer Experience dealing with how New Yorkers interact with your product and the experience they receive from that interaction. UX is measured with metrics like: success rate, error rate, abandonment rate, time to complete task, and (if it's a digital product) clicks to completion.
- Customer Experience (CX) - the public's perceptions of and overall satisfaction with interactions with an agency, product, or service. It also encompasses the overall impression a customer has when navigating state entities.
- Service Delivery - the multitude of diverse interactions between a customer and State agency. Services are delivered through many different communication channels including but not limited to websites, emails, phone calls, and in-person interactions.
- Service - the sum of the help provided by an agency and its partners throughout the process a customer goes through to obtain, receive, or make use of a public offering (or comply with a policy). Services begin with a customer need, are processed through either a self-service workflow or a series of interactions, and end with a outcome. Services need not deliver a physical good or benefit and could extend as simply as delivering information via a website.
- Critical State Service Provider (CSSP) - state entities designated by the New York State CXO that provide or fund high-impact customer-facing services, either due to a large customer base or a high impact on those served by the program. Here's the current list of CSSPs.
- Human-Centered Design (HCD) - a problem-solving method that aims to solve challenges by deeply understanding the experiences of the people most impacted by them. A typical HCD process includes discovery, design, delivery, and measurement stages, with an emphasis on iteratively prototyping solutions that better meet users needs.
- Journey Map - a visual representation of the steps the customer takes to reach their goals and the emotions they feel at each step of the process.
- Touchpoints - any direct or indirect contact a customer has with your service/product. A touchpoint can be digital, physical, or human. Here are examples of each:
- Digital Touchpoints: website, email, mobile application, online form, automated messenger
- Physical Touchpoints: on-site at an organization's location, interacting with a physical service/product, such as completeing a paper form
- Human Touchpoints: interaction between an organization's employee and a customer
- Voice of Customer (VOC) - a systematic approach for collecting, analyzing, and taking actions based on the customer feedback data that an organization collects.