Embrace the Cloud and AI to Cut Public Sector Communications Costs

Rebuilding Public Trust Through Technology

Public sector communications often don’t leave a great impression on the general public. Indeed, government has a reputation for being slow, confusing, and difficult to get in touch with. This has major knock-on effects on public trust; if the general public can’t get in contact and speak to a human being, they’re going to lose confidence in the work of government.

Public sector communications represent the point at which government agencies touch the lives of ordinary people. In many ways, it is the very reason these agencies exist. They can’t serve the public if you can’t get in contact with them.

Increasingly, however, public sector organizations are facing slashed budgets and financial limitations. Balancing the need to cut costs against the need to preserve contact with the public is a serious challenge, but technology provides a solution.

Lessons can be learnt from the private sector. Plenty of private sector organizations have embraced cloud communications as a way to cut costs and build flexibility, and it’s easy to see why:

• The cloud offers flexibility – a cloud communications solution can scale up and down at the click of a button, allowing organizations to plan for surges in demand, without having to pay out for capacity they're not using. The cloud means you only have to spend on what you actually need.

• The cloud embraces new technologies – The vast majority of new technologies, AI included, are cloud-based. That means that integrating between different cloud solutions is as simple as preparing an API integration. When new technologies become available, a cloud solution can incorporate them instantly.

• The cloud is hardware-independent – The cloud can be accessed via browser, on any internet-enabled device. There’s no need to install and maintain on-premise servers, or to update your entire organization’s hardware. Just provide a stable internet connection, and you’re ready to go.

Technology has the potential to transform public sector communications for the better and to dramatically cut costs as it does. This efficiency boost will supercharge the public sector, especially when paired with AI.

AI-Powered Public Sector Communications

The rise in interest surrounding AI has been hard to miss. And calls for widespread adoption across the public sector are increasing, as a strategy for cutting costs whilst boosting operational efficiency.

Discussion of AI might prompt some unease; many are cynical that AI will cost humans their jobs, but the truth is, some of AI’s most productive use cases are in supporting human workers. AI isn’t here to replace humans, but to enhance them. 

When it comes to public sector communications, AI can take on a number of different roles:

• Simple and repetitive inquiries can be automated by chatbots. Most public-facing communications involve some kind of information exchange (likely checking and updating citizen data). These interactions can easily be automated; a chatbot can draw information from systems of record, and populate new data to those systems without the need for agent intervention.

• This means that large swathes of public sector communications can be automated; freeing agents to focus only on high-priority tasks, delivering empathetic public contact where it’s most needed.

• And generative AI can go further, offering opportunities to support the agent before and after the interaction. Generative AI can be used to populate databases and forms, automatically completing post-call work without the need for human intervention. This can cut Average Handling Time by as much as 27%, saving invaluable employee time, and cutting costs accordingly.

AI adoption promises significant improvements to the efficiency of public sector communications. Simple changes can lead to big savings; technological adoption can supercharge the public sector.

What Can the Public Sector Learn from Customer Experience?

In recent years, the idea of ‘Customer Experience’ has transformed the way that businesses in the private sector interact with their customers. It’s based on a simple formulation: more than the product, the experience of interacting with a business is what creates loyalty. And it’s a truth we’ve seen play out in a thousand different ways, across every sector. When people feel valued, they keep coming back. They’ll forgive mistakes, and go from simple customers to fans, excited to see what you do next.

It might be naïve to expect the public to become ‘fans’ of public sector organizations. That said, treating your citizens like customers is a great first step to improving your public-facing communications:

• In the private sector, customers expect speed. An interaction that takes too long is treated as a serious failure, and businesses obsessively track metrics such as Average Handling Time and First Response Time in order to streamline performance. Staying on top of those metrics is critical to ensuring the highest level of public contact quality.

• The private sector understands that customer data is critical. Every interaction is supported by relevant customer data. The agent can see all the information a business holds on the customer, including interaction history. This supports hyper-personalization; that is, it makes the customer feel heard and understood.

• Regulatory compliance is perhaps more critical for public sector communications than it is for businesses. That said, the ability to transcribe and monitor 100% of interactions to ensure the highest levels of quality and compliance has helped the private sector deliver high-quality experiences, with no danger of non-compliance.

‘Customer Experience’ isn’t just a business fad. It’s a paradigm shift that transforms the ways organizations interact with the general public. A CX mindset can change your organization overnight, and turn your greatest detractors into advocates.