3. Meet people where they are
Australians generally want speed, transparency, and a personalised approach when resolving customer service issues, according to a 2021 ServiceNow survey. However, Wallace’s analysis finds two new mentalities are emerging. ‘Digital Experiencers’ will embrace technology with few limits. ‘Organic Experiencers’—roughly 25% of the population—will demand more choice in how they interact with brands and employers. This group will reject digital-only models, preferring to pick and choose between touchpoints based on the task at hand.
This divide means business and government will need to design products and services that cater to both groups.
Energy Queensland is a power utility that manages 247,000km of electric network for more than two million customers. This requires a seamless flow of real-time information across the organisation. Disconnected, home-grown systems meant employees were wasting valuable time waiting for decisions, actions, and responses, causing bottlenecks and eroding trust.
When the highly regulated utility created a digital strategy, the mission was clear: “We wanted to make it simple for our people, 70% of whom are field workers. Whether they were in the office lodging a request with HR or out on site placing an order with the procurement team, we needed a consistent experience,” says Kirby Lanagan, manager, Enterprise Service Management.
But that didn’t mean forcing every employee into digital channels. “We made sure people could still call into the helpdesk and waited for them to adapt to the new app in their own time,” Kirby says.
As a result, employees have gained back critical time to focus on higher value tasks, and can rapidly access data to meet regulatory requirements more efficiently.