How might we become more customer focused and better engage the community?
Allegheny County Department of Human Services
BACKGROUND
Allegheny County Department of Human Services values understanding clients’ service experiences as well as engaging community members. Feedback and engagement is critical for planning, quality improvement and program evaluation. Looking ahead, this type of feedback can further facilitate innovation in human services by designing for and with the end user.
ROLE
Manager for Customer Experience Analytics team tasked with designing and implementing a customer experience strategy. Supervised team of research interviewers and analysts, coordinated across departments (e.g., Behavioral Health, Intellectual Disability, Child Welfare, Aging), presented concepts and results from pilot projects to leadership, administrators, staff as well as community.
PROCESS
My approach for developing a customer experience strategy was multi-faceted and included:
1) Measuring customer satisfaction
2) Advocating, and strengthening qualitative research to understand customer's lived experience
3) Piloting human-centered design to collaborate with stakeholders and identify innovative opportunities
Measuring Customer Satisfaction
First, I was the co-lead for procuring digital tools to equip the department with hearing directly from our clients, or “customers.” We issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) and after a comprehensive review selected several vendors to pilot tools such as web-based survey platform (Qualtrics, see Figure 1a), text messaging survey (Citizen Insights, see Figure 1b), and satisfaction kiosks (HappyOrNot) (report: https://www.alleghenycountyanalytics.us/index.php/2018/09/10/pilot-program-uses-technology-to-collect-quick-actionable-feedback-from-human-services-clients/). Satisfaction kiosks were another tool piloted under the larger objective to collect increase the volume of satisfaction data while making it as easy as possible for community members and DHS clients to give their feedback. Several pilot projects were launched to evaluate participant acceptability, feasibility, and overall success with these digital tools. As we introduced more efficient satisfaction survey tools as part of our “toolbox,” I also initiated developing a standardized satisfaction survey which was modeled after private and public sector customer experience indices (e.g., Veteran Experience or GSA’s Government Customer Experience Index).
Figure 1. As part of implementing Qualtrics across the organization, I worked with our graphic designer to develop a flyer to promote awareness about Qualtrics and upcoming digital tools for measuring satisfaction and engaging DHS clients. Several pilot projects were launched assessing participant acceptability and overall feasibility with using SMS-based surveys with DHS clients
Understanding the Customer's Lived Experience
The second facet of the customer experience strategy was advocating for qualitative research, in addition to quantitative research (e.g., survey or administrative data), as applicable. As part of this tactic, I facilitated several trainings with DHS staff on qualitative data collection and analysis procedures to increase awareness. I also led projects to understand the customer experience. One such project was conducting qualitative in-home interviews with family members to understand and described their lived experience with recent housing crisis as well as their perspective with a pilot homeless case management program or service (report: https://www.alleghenycountyanalytics.us/index.php/2016/12/16/homeless-services-supports-coordination-qualitative-program-evaluation/). Another project was collecting qualitative interviews with family members to understand their current behaviors, including attitude with enrolling in preventive family-based services. One of the key aspects of this facet was going into the community; rarely did I have family members or other DHS clients come to the office. Instead, I often visited them where they were most comfortable, which included front porches, coffee shops, building lobby areas, and/or parks.
Piloting Human-Centered Design
The third facet of the customer experience strategy that I developed and initiated at Allegheny County DHS was introducing human-centered design. During my tenure, we piloted several human-centered design projects to increase staff awareness to design thinking and this creative problem-solving approach. These pilot projects included discovery research to understand the experience with accessing substance use services (report: https://www.alleghenycountyanalytics.us/index.php/2018/11/08/the-journey-into-allegheny-countys-substance-use-disorder-treatment-system/), understanding and designing prototypes for improving housing stability in the community (see Figure 2), facilitating a design workshop to brainstorm new ways to facilitate employment services among clients experiencing housing crisis (see Figure 3), conducting discovery research and collecting feedback on prototypes to design a “digital front door” for human services (report: https://www.alleghenycounty.us/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=6442467044), and coordinating with administrators from Allegheny Family Court, Allegheny Children, Youth and Families as well as CMU Design to redesign Family Court experience.
Figure 3. I consulted with a diverse group of stakeholders comprised of Allegheny County homeless administrators and providers to introduce a human-centered design framework to understanding their customers and identifying insights. Then, after synthesizing their findings I facilitated a design workshop (structured after IDEO's Design Thinking resources) which included brainstorming, storyboarding and journey mapping.
IMPLICATIONS
There were several implications as a result of this work, including:
There were several implications as a result of this work, including:
- Various Request for Proposals (RFPs) developed and published based on satisfaction and/or discovery design research
- Standardizing key performance indicators for customer experience as part of larger effort on department-wide performance reporting
- Cross-functional collaboration and coordination among multiple departments collecting various satisfaction data
- Becoming a leader in local government for customer experience, offering technical assistance and support to other departments on lessons learned, steps and procedures for establishing a customer experience measurement strategy
- Expanding the team's capacity with an intern from local university
- Various reports and publication on department website