This week, how governments really are trying to follow the private sector’s best practices on customer-obsessed, digital-first services. Plus, Chinese consumers atop the luxury market and reading picks from Jill Zucker, a McKinsey senior partner in New York. |
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When was the last time your interaction with a government agency was so delightful you had to tell all your friends about it? It’s a sad truth that negative moments tend to linger longer than positive ones: we remember the interminable lines at the post office but never give a thought to all the mail that has arrived on time. |
People have come to expect the kind of customer-obsessed, digital-first services offered by the private sector. Now the public sector is getting serious about customer experience (CX) too, adopting a start-up mentality to deliver rapid, iterative services. Think Amazon, Zillow, and … e-Tax. |
Yes, e-Tax. That’s the electronic portal the Estonian government created to allow citizens to pay taxes with a single click—and it takes just three to five minutes. Estonia is often touted for being an architect of superior CX in public agencies. Even President Obama gave the country a shout-out for its public-sector digital prowess in 2014. |
Service New South Wales is another example of an agency that successfully simplified citizen access to government services. It was built like a start-up within the Australian government, with a one-stop-shop approach to improve CX. For example, its “boating, fishing, and outdoors” page offers information on boat and vessel registrations, national parks and state forests—and even how to “apply for a license to catch and release reptiles.” Customer-satisfaction rates jumped to a sustained average of more than 97 percent in the five-plus years since its 2013 launch. |
But all too often, government leaders view customer experience as a trade-off with other priorities and invest only where they are used to seeing the value—in mission outcomes, operational efficiency, or responding to public or regulatory pressure for change. And when agencies do try to tackle CX, they make small bets with piecemeal changes and patchwork investments. This leads to predictable results: incremental, short-term improvements that fall woefully short of delivering the substantive impact that leaders crave and citizen customers remember. |
Our research shows it pays to go big and bold. In 2018, we launched a CX survey of more than 20,000 citizens across 140 government services in seven countries. We found that improved CX can help every agency—from the one that guides you through national parks to the one that helps you file your taxes—have quantifiable impact on the outcomes that matter: achieving the mission, managing to budget, mitigating risk, improving employee morale, and (most important) strengthening public trust. |
None of this is news in the private sector, where CX has become a core metric of performance—with leaders outperforming laggards in the S&P 500 by more than 200 percent in the past decade. Now, at last, government leaders are taking note. Look for happy campers and even happy taxpayers. |
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OFF THE CHARTS |
Chinese consumers: Leading in luxury |
Chinese consumers are now the engine of worldwide growth in luxury spending. Across China’s post-1980s and post-1990s generations, there are four distinct clusters of buyers. Luxury newcomers care most about brands, while status surfers are the least brand loyal; together they account for 70 percent of the luxury market. Young spenders shop for what’s trendy rather than branded products. |
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INTERVIEW |
Wanted: ‘Lifelong learners and problem solvers’ |
The skills necessary for a successful career are shifting; children in school now will have to learn how to navigate a changing economy and solve increasingly complex problems. Wendy Kopp, CEO and founder of Teach for All and Teach for America, says businesses must be “equal stakeholders” in helping kids attain “the broader set of socioemotional skills necessary to thrive.” |
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MORE ON MCKINSEY.COM |
Don’t follow the leader | Research shows that the most significant predictor of successful decision making is the quality of the discussions and debate. Leaders that can generate rigorous discussion in team meetings are what set the best-performing companies apart. |
Biotech in Europe: Building on a strong foundation | Armed with adequate funding to expand, European biotech companies have ample opportunity to translate innovation into products and could become global competitors in three areas. |
Flushing out the money launderers | Advanced risk-rating models apply machine learning and statistical analysis to dynamic customer profiles, dramatically improving detection and creating a powerful anti‒money laundering tool. |
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WHAT WE’RE READING
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Jill Zucker |
Jill Zucker, a senior partner and the leader of McKinsey’s New York office, has focused on financial services and consumer trends related to strategy, marketing, and sales. She also founded the Dual Career Initiative, a program to support the personal and professional advancement of McKinsey colleagues and their partners as they balance two careers.
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You probably know the phrase, “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?” Martin Dugard’s Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone is a riveting account of the explorer Dr. Livingstone’s quest to map the source of the Nile River in the 1860s, and the journalist Henry Morton Stanley’s own quest to find Livingstone, who had vanished. Their adventures captivated readers in both Britain and the United States. Dugard does a great job of showing the real human struggles and sacrifices required of explorers back then—and of anyone on a mission to explore the unknown. |
Henrietta Lacks died of cancer in 1951, but her cells, unbeknownst to her, became a key source of medical research that helped develop the polio vaccine and gene mapping, among other advances. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot focuses on how the journalist found Henrietta’s family and told them about her contribution. In one brutal twist, the family struggled with the cost of healthcare at various points. The book delves into the intersection between medical ethics and race, and how that played out within her family. |
I loved reading about the role of women during different historical eras in The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II, by Denise Kiernan. Women from small towns across the US were recruited to work on the ultrasecret Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Their willingness to support and serve our country with limited to no transparency about their role—most found out they were helping to build the atomic bomb only at the end of the war—was a real demonstration of selflessness. It is also an important reminder of how integral women have been in major moments in history. |
As the mother of three daughters, reading Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder by Reshma Saujani helped me understand the cultural reasons behind the confidence gap between boys and girls. Saujani talks about how many women learned as girls to be polite rather than to find their own voice, and that has led to being afraid to fail. I strive to instill in my daughters the confidence and resilience to tackle life’s challenges, and I found Brave, Not Perfect to be very helpful. |
Finally, as a consultant, I’m on so many conference calls that I prefer to read in my spare time instead of listening to anything. However, I do love the podcast “How I Built This with Guy Raz,” particularly the episode on the creators of SoulCycle. Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler talk about how they didn’t like the exercise classes that New York gyms offered so they formed a studio of their own. And we know how that vision turned out: SoulCycle has studios across North America and a devoted clientele. |
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BACKTALK |
Have feedback or other ideas? We’d love to hear from you. |
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