Overview
Australia's Service NSW (SNSW) provides a range of government services across more than 200 departments and agencies including licensing and registration. The vision of SNSW was to combine all these departments into a ‘one stop shop’ by streamlining all government access points, whilst delivering and improving the overall quality of service provided. Having discussed the requirements and goals, SNSW wanted to be customer centric by providing a seamless, user friendly and great service. SNSW engaged Q-nomy's Partner and Reseller in Australia, NEXA, in a large-scale project also involving a multitude of stakeholders, including customers and staff to implement Q-nomy's customer experience optimization solution.
The Challenge
Customers needed a single location to complete various service needs, more convenient ways to do this and a friendlier experience. SNSW was created to combine all interactions with the New South Wales government into a unified call center, online experience and service center model. More than 1000 transactions across 16 government agencies were brought under the SNSW umbrella with their focus on providing a positive customer experience as being their highest priority, which required a massive overhaul of their current service delivery model. The NSW state government was acutely aware of the lack of satisfaction customers had in its delivery of basic services. Customers dealing with government departments meant multiple forms, long queues, unavailability of service at convenient times, and confusion about which department to contact for the right service.
The Solution
The first step was to run Service Design workshops to understand the customers’ needs in delivering quality service, in line with NEXA's consultative methodology. Customer research, interviews and surveys were conducted with over 2000 people and 20 focus groups. Customers expressed that they wanted faster, easier ways to access government services with a single point of contact. Following that, it was time to understand the service capabilities of each agency as well as the staff, by highlighting pain points and opportunities.
The customers’ needs were extensively assessed before co-creation commenced. Customers were empowered by being actively involved in co-creation workshops, iterative proof of concepts designs and testing, right through to the delivery of the service. Their feedback played a vital role ensuring that customer expectations were being met whilst ultimately improving the overall quality of the Service Centers. The Service Centers offered several ways that customers can interact and Q-nomy’s Customer Experience Solution had to be flexible in order to meet these requirements. Within the Service Centers, customers are greeted by a concierge who will answer any queries the customer has, ensure they have the correct paperwork with them and if necessary, virtual queue them to the best member of staff who will handle their enquiry. The Service Centers also allow customers to ‘self-serve’ by way of desk mounted kiosks. This is particularly useful for easy transactions that customers can complete themselves. The ‘Express Desk’ allow customers to interact with members of staff on queries where the customer has the correct paperwork and the transaction can be processed quickly.
Results & Benefits
Since Implementation NEXA’s Customer Experience Solution is delivering many benefits for SNSW, with greater transparency of operations and customer service since the first SNSW in Kiama opened in 2013, as a one stop-shop for government service delivery.
- In the first tranche at SNSW, 19 one-stop shops opened within 12 months averaging a new Center opening every three weeks
- In 2019, the 100th SNSW at Nyngan opened, having served more than 26.3 million through 100 Service Centers across the state, unifying the customer journey and improving the customer experience
- Measuring SNSW customer satisfaction rating at 97%
- Providing real-time data into customer wait times of 6.5 million customers served, with an average wait time in branch of 7 minutes
- Streamlining driver test appointments, with 95.5% being utilized by customers which reduced the waiting times to book a driving test from 35 days in 2015, to 8 days currently
“We’re creating a really great customer experience that drives value, and efficiency for the broader Economy. Our reputation is inspiring other states such as Victoria, Queensland, also Tasmania to ask ‘what is SNSW doing?’ so that they can adopt and learn some of these practices and apply them within their own states to provide better services for their citizens too. We’re also in discussion with the Federal Government about how we can connect even further to provide services for the Australian citizen.” – Glenn King, CEO Service NSW