State of citizen services: How to fix Australians’ frustration
Australians are frustrated with waiting on hold for citizen services. Many say they'll take their dissatisfaction to the voting booths at the federal election in May. According to recent ServiceNow public sector research, nearly 60% of people are more likely to vote for a party that promises to improve citizen services.
With cost-of-living stress and interest rate uncertainty, it's not hard to understand why Aussies’ expectations are high. As economic pressures rise, people are seeking more support from government services—up nearly 10% since 2022.
This increasing demand is exposing gaps in the technology underpinning the systems society relies on, creating a catalyst for change across the nation's public sector workforce.
No time to wait
Last year, Australian citizens waited 123 million hours on hold to make a customer service complaint or resolve an issue, according to our research. Nearly 10% of that time, 9.8 million hours, was spent on hold with government services—federal, state, and local. Encouragingly, citizens rate emergency services, public safety, and healthcare as providing the best customer service. However, government agencies have some catching up to do compared to customer experiences in other sectors.
Citizens are most irritated at being left on hold (52%) and not having their issues resolved quickly (44%). These circumstances are taking a toll on the nation's mental health: More than half of Aussies say being left on hold by government services negatively affects their well-being, with nearly two in five citing complicated systems as a major factor.
It’s clear that traditional ways of operating and delivering citizen services no longer stack up. Changing citizen behavior, combined with an imperative to do more and better with less, means the pressure is on to clean up decades of messy processes and disconnected systems so that it's easier for people to get things done. Accelerating transformation efforts and adopting and implementing new technology, including AI, can help.
Smarter support, faster results
As AI catapults everyone and everything into a digital era of speed, self-service, and personalization, expectations are rising. Close to half of Aussies agree three things are necessary to make citizen services more user-friendly:
- Being able to speak to a qualified or trained person
- Not being bounced between departments and having to repeat the issue to a new person each time
- Improving the speed of resolution
Chatbots and auto-summaries can accelerate interactions and answer simple queries. However, when these solutions are deployed in silos and designed without an end-to-end experience in mind, they struggle to deliver.
Over the past year, this scattershot approach to AI in many organizations has eroded trust in chatbots, our research found. Nearly half (45%) of Australians say they prefer to speak to a live customer service representative rather than an automated one.
Agencies can’t just increase headcount to solve the problem. Australia's entire public sector workforce is under strain, with demand for skills in critical industries outstripping available skills, according to ServiceNow’s 2024 Workforce Skills Forecast. That study found that in healthcare alone, 348,000 new roles must be filled by 2028, with nearly 55,000 new workers needed in the government sector more broadly.
AI agents offer a feasible solution. They can help bogged-down staff deal with heavy workloads and complexity by autonomously handling complicated tasks and working with employees to help manage processes from start to finish.
However, AI agents are only as good as the platform they’re built on. ServiceNow® AI Agents are uniquely integrated into the ServiceNow platform, giving them secure access to billions of pieces of information and millions of automations that can radically help transform citizen services while maintaining the highest governance and compliance standards.
A new state of connection
Connecting teams through technology and enabling data sharing can give governments a 360-degree view of the citizen experience, create consistency across all touch points, help predict issues such as payment defaults before they happen, and make 24/7 access a reality.
Examples of citizen-centric transformation aren't hard to find. Service NSW and the NSW Department of Customer Service have led the way with digital services built around citizens’ needs. Similarly, Queensland recently introduced the Department for Customer Services, Open Data, and Small and Family Business.
Southern Cross Health Insurance, New Zealand’s largest private health insurer works across a range of government agencies to share information. Using AI, the organization improved internal processes and increased staff efficiency, boosting satisfaction from 70% to 99.3%. ServiceNow Virtual Agent has enabled a 24/7 service desk for employees to easily find what they need, when they need it, so that they can serve customers more effectively.
After being stuck for half a year on trying to deliver a new digital capability, the Australian Department of Defense worked with ServiceNow to create a proof of concept in six hours. The agency then deployed this new capability in just 31 days—a record breaking timeline for the department.
Chris Fechner, CEO of the Digital Transformation Agency, explained at ServiceNow Federal Forum that scaling these kinds of promising results requires public sector technology teams to shift to a mindest that favors iteration and innovation over large-scale transformation. "Agencies need to do things smaller but much more frequently so that the success and value of digital and data becomes a virtuous cycle," he says.
Technology in the service of people
Many government agencies have made significant progress toward transformation. What they do next to connect their data across departments and agencies could revolutionize citizen and public servant experiences.
Delivering intuitive, personalized service in support of all citizen demographics necessitates a different approach to service delivery—one that’s both digital and human. It’s time to swap organizational silos and departmental hierarchies for AI solutions that connect people, data, and processes.
Gain more insights in our 2025 Customer Experience Report for Public Sector.