Welcome to our July newsletter! This month’s edition is dedicated to exploring ideas on how state and local governments can improve residents’ experiences when accessing services.

Our research finds that when a residents’ experience utilizing state services meets or exceeds expectations, it can boost trust in government, improve morale among the civil services, diminish negative media coverage, and lower costs for government agencies.

So, how can government agencies meet public demand for services?

States and the White House have put out numerous executive orders and expectations to improve resident experience. Our 2022 State of States research highlighted some states, services, and user journeys where government outperforms private sector organizations; suggesting this level of performance is possible. There are 3 areas that states and local agencies can focus on to turn potential into performance:

1. Decide where to focus and invest. When looking at overall satisfaction with government services, the impact of individual services on overall satisfaction depends heavily on the socio-economic, demographic, and geographic makeup of residents. Governments can take a nuanced approach to identifying which services can be a focus for improvement, based on their specific resident population.
2. Measure what matters Understanding resident experience is becoming more of a science – it can be benchmarked, segmented, measured and managed in a data-driven way. Resident experience efforts are not ‘one-time’ projects – it is critical to set-up the right metrics, governance, and systems to continuously improve. With little effort, agencies can quickly diagnose where to focus and test if initiatives have impact.
3. Train up. Organizing for resident centricity is not a ‘bolt-on’ – it’s everyone’s job to be a resident experience steward. Governments can embed user-centric mindsets throughout their organizations by training employees on resident experience best practices.

Combined, the actions above may allow governments to catch up or exceed private sector performance in customer satisfaction – and to potentially increase peoples’ trust in government along the way.

Please contact us with topics you’d like us to cover, other feedback or questions.

Thank you for your service,

Tim Ward and Jess Kahn from McKinsey’s US State & Local Government Practice

Customer-centric transformation in government can enhance productivity and people’s satisfaction with the agency’s services. The approach can include deploying user-centered design and data analytics to tailor services to public needs and implementing agile ways of working to quickly address feedback and adapt to changing needs.

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Governments can deliver exceptional customer experiences—here’s how

Our research found that certain services disproportionately influence customer experience. Nationally, vehicle services, taxes, public transit, affordable-housing assistance, and employment benefits are seen as the most important—driving over half of overall satisfaction. But fewer than 40 percent of residents say they are satisfied with their experiences interacting with these services. Our research also finds that states with high overall customer experience tend to overperform on the services that are most important to their residents.

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