MVP Digital Product - Government Client
A digital MVP solution to support the client in minimising the emotional toll, reducing the cognitive load and administrative burden on their customers during a difficult time in their lives.
​
Due to contractual requirements, this case study is anonymous and only including written descriptions of the project and deliverables.
The Solutions
A digital MVP solution to support the client in minimising the emotional toll, reducing the cognitive load and administrative burden on their customers during a difficult time in their lives.
The Unique Problem to Solve
The complex, drawn out process for customers took a significant emotional toll and caused a large administrative burden during a time of heightened emotions and distress.
As a result, the clients had engaged The Customer Experience Company (CEC) to help them conduct research to ascertain how they could improve their customers’ experience and regain the trust of the public after stories surfaced of potential misconduct and poor interactions with the government department.
Preparation
I joined this project as a learning opportunity during my first month at CEC when the team was conducting CIs and iterating designs of a clickable prototype intended to improve the communication between the client and their customers as well as enhancing transparency of the holistic process through access to an digital tool.
Our Approach
The team went through multiple phases of iterating the designs of the digital tool which involved conducting CI’s with real-life customers who were currently engaged with the organisation.
The feedback within CI’s were analysed and synthesised to draw out specific improvements to the process, which fed into the final designs of the app.
Challenges to navigate
Designing the right solution for the right customer: the omnichannel approach
​
A portion of the customers that were involved in our research belonged to older generations who weren’t always as comfortable using modern technologies such as mobile applications, which raised the challenge of balancing the utilisation and adoption of the latest technology with designing the best solution suited to the customer base.
Stakeholder Management
​
Due to the nature of project’s client ecosystem, stakeholder management was a learning curve for the team as we navigated how best to liaise with the right people to provide updates and/or findings that most mattered to them all the while keeping all key stakeholders aligned and in agreement of the desired outcomes.
What I'd do differently if given the chance
DISCLAIMER: I was only a part of this project team for a portion of its lifecycle and may be missing key contextual knowledge that may skew my perspective or not be aware of mitigation actions taken based on my following retrospective.
Stakeholder Alignment and Advocacy
If given the opportunity to work on this project again within the same influencing factors (and with hindsight on our side) I’d encourage our team to apply even more emphasis on stakeholder management at the beginning of the project. To be more explicit, this would involve identifying all key stakeholders, meeting with each of them (determining whether it would be most fruitful to do this individually or collectively) and align on their core roles in relation to the project, their desired outcomes and anything else that would shape our working relationship and communication needs.
This evolved understanding of the importance of stakeholder management within the public sector is derived from research that I co-led at CEC for an public-facing resource: https://www.customerexperience.com.au/post/from-good-design-to-great-delivery-in-the-public-sector