Came across an article regarding government modernization and the Post-Pandemic “Digital Transformation”, thought it was a good read and wanted to share.
Below is a link to the article as well as a few of the talking points.
https://statescoop.com/pandemic-was-a-tipping-point-for-government-modernization/
Talking points:
- Many public agencies are in a transition period between “doing digital” — using digital technologies to augment legacy systems — and “becoming digital,” in which they follow a mixture of physical and virtual processes.
- Several large-scale experiments in government rolled out so quickly and at such a massive scale during the pandemic.
- The pandemic demonstrated just how far many government agencies still must go to become truly digital-first organizations.
- Agencies came through the pandemic saying that the crisis has accelerated their digital transformations, and that more needs to be done, with 80% saying their agencies’ efforts “haven’t gone far enough.”
- Most governments agencies are lagging behind the corporate world in harnessing the power of digital.
- One effect of the pandemic is that governments are finally seeing digital services as vital as corporations have.
- “Typically, previously, we’d see very big discrepancies between government and the commercial sector in how they thought about digital”.
- Among the U.S. public sector, states and larger municipal governments were further along, especially in terms of experimentation and innovation. They launch pilots more frequently, scale pilots more frequently, innovate faster.
- Government at all levels is likely to be more mature in the near future. “All agencies will have strong digital capabilities in five years”.
- While post-pandemic digitization efforts are unlikely to unfold at the breakneck speeds at which state and local governments scrambled during the early days of COVID-19, agencies should try to move more quickly than they did prior to the health crisis. They shouldn’t end up with the speed they had before, It should be somewhere in between.
I believe that agencies that are in the process of the digital transformation and are successful in “becoming digital” will create a better quality of life for their citizens, strengthen public trust and improve their overall customer service.
If your organization hasn’t started this process already then now is the time, don’t wait until the next big disruption; whatever that may be.
When it comes to making payments, calling into an IVR may not be the first thing that comes to mind. Personally, online banking is how I like to take care of regular monthly bills - it's fast and convenient.
However, for organizations across multiple industries, offering payment by IVR as an option is still an important channel, for a number of reasons:
1) Other payment methods may have been affected such as in-office payments due to the pandemic.
2) Customers calling customer service to ask questions about the bill prior to paying want a convenient and secure way to pay by phone. Transferring the caller to the IVR for payment is simple, effective, and efficient, and addresses PCI compliance concerns.
3) Despite the naysayers, offering IVR as a payment option increases revenues. The percentage of overall revenues IVR can represent varies greatly, and can depend on many factors (ease-of use, how it's promoted, etc.). For some customers, IVR can be very seasonal, where 90% of the use is just during a few days of the year, but is a must-have because IVR contributes significant revenues.
4) For healthcare customers that have added IVR payment as option, it's not uncommon to see IVR payments represents 18%-20% of all monthly revenues received.
5) Offering an additional payment method to the customer, when properly implemented, leads to higher customer satisfaction.
5) It is available 24/7.
Cloud-based IVR removes previous barriers of premise based systems, often with a fast implementation, and a low set up cost. Contact us for consultation on how we can help make this happen for your organization.