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Government’s Rising Opportunity to Listen and Communicate More Effectively

27/01/2023
Consultants
New York, USA
285
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Accenture Song's Jaime Bloom and Kevin Ellenwood on the need for government services to be simple, intuitive, and trustworthy

Jaime Bloom and Kevin Ellenwood are Accenture Song (formerly Accenture Interactive) managing directors serving public sector client needs.


The pandemic hastened the development of 'digital government,' including an expansion of remote/hybrid workforces and online services. There is now tremendous opportunity for many government organisations, including national, state, and local agencies, to more effectively listen, communicate, and co-create with the people and groups being served as part of a new era of more responsive, innovative public services.

We know from recent research that people want government services to be simple, intuitive, and trustworthy. Nearly two-thirds of US respondents earlier this year said accessing public services is frustrating, and they prioritised 'ease of use' and 'more confidence in data security and privacy' when asked what would make them more likely to use government digital services. At the same time, more than one-third (36%) said they prefer in-person services, and one-in-five lacks high-speed Internet access at home. Nevertheless, whether services are accessed online, in-person or via telephone or mail, digital tools encompassing data analytics, sentiment monitoring and collaborative capabilities are now widely available to help improve and, in some cases, reimagine public service offerings and delivery.

With the ongoing expansion of digital capabilities in government, there is strong potential to truly reimagine and invigorate communications and marketing opportunities for public services. Government leaders widely see communications strategy as extremely important in achieving their departmental or program objectives, and now data and analytics capabilities enabled by the cloud offer massive potential gains by better aligning marketing and communications with organisational goals.

Marketing and communications in government, as in business, are intended to reach a targeted audience with messages to raise awareness or to take a desired action. But while most government leaders likely believe their organisation has an effective communication strategy, measuring effectiveness of communications is a relative shortcoming. In another recent study, we found nearly 40% of federal, state and local government leaders surveyed earlier this year cited difficulties in understanding the impact of their marketing and communications efforts.

How should government organisations be working to improve their marketing and communications? At the most basic level, all should have a listening and learning strategy, including sentiment monitoring to understand how messages are being received. This can be achieved with a number of technology solutions which analyse discussions and conversations to evaluate tone, intent, and emotions, helping organisations assess the need for improvements in messaging and content, visual design and communications methods. Government should be continually striving to use such data to better understand their audiences and to drive improvements in program effectiveness and citizen services.

We are in a new era with data-driven approaches to help organisations deepen their understanding of target audiences, shape messages and materials, improve the means of delivery and ultimately, more effectively motivate and serve customers. We recently launched a new report, The Life Centricity Playbook: Proven Strategies for Growth through Relevance, with global research finding that 95% of business executives believe their customers are changing faster than they can change their business. The pace of this change and perceived unpredictability – economic, environmental, social, and political – is driving organisations to move from customer centricity to life-centric strategies that take a broader view of understanding and engaging customers based on better understanding of their concerns and ever-changing needs and priorities.  

The imperative of moving from customer centricity to life centricity applies to government as well. After all, government is the largest and most diverse service provider with the broadest base of customers. The good news is that there are abundant opportunities for government to better capture and act upon data to address people’s needs more effectively and to find new opportunities to add value. We know people crave government services that are easier to use and trusted, and there is tremendous and ever-growing potential for government leaders to tap and develop data, analytics and content strategies to better understand, communicate and collaborate with those being served.

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