Opportunity
The cost of maintaining legacy systems at a large federal agency was growing at an unsustainable rate. Many of those systems were paper-based, managed by a group of employees rapidly approaching retirement age, and were not meeting the demands of customers who expect a smooth digital experience. As a result, the organization ranked 15 out of 17 for large federal agencies in customer experience.
Solution
The Clearing partnered with the agency to design an innovative, agile product management solution to deliver digital products faster and better sync with the rapidly shifting needs of the American people.
We outlined our approach using a visual framework showing the information flow of customer life events. This allowed us to better map out their overall experiences, understand the current state of information flow, and imagine future customer-centric improvements at the agency.
We utilized Design Thinking and organizational development principles to deliver customer value throughout our time together, with a particular focus on cross-functional strategic planning and practical application. The agency has begun to reap the rewards of data-driven, collaborative, and customer-focused planning across the agency and is excited to implement a continuous product improvement plan.
Impact
By putting the customer at the center of the development process, the agency recognized the importance of digitizing paper-based notifications, making it possible to notify 67 million Americans of changes to their benefits digitally. As a result, customer satisfaction scores for online services have increased in the last year, while the agency was able to reduce their planning and analysis time from 12 months to three weeks, significantly reducing overhead and saving taxpayer dollars.