Conduent centers its customer experience approach around 'no wrong door'
Anna Sever joined Conduent over the summer to lead its government segment. Courtesy of Conduent.
By
Ross Wilkers
Federal policy trickles down to the state and local levels of government that distribute benefits for citizens. Here is how Conduent wants to be a primary partner for those agencies on the technology front.
The federal government’s customer experience agenda is all about making it easier for citizens to interact with and obtain services from agencies, including benefits they are eligible to receive.
State and local governments are a part of that too because agencies at those levels are often a person’s primary connection to those benefits, in addition to how federal policy trickles down.
In talking with Conduent’s government segment president Anna Sever, the dual ideas of having “no wrong door” and having integrated self-service portals for those interactions came up throughout the conversation.
Sever highlighted one example in Mississippi, where 75% of people that applied for health and human services there did so via their mobile phones. That sounds a lot like the way people also conduct e-commerce on smart devices.
“It’s about trying to reach consumers where they are in a manner that they're used to consuming data and interacting with government, which is now all about what you can do on your phone,” Sever told us. “I use my old English training, when they said a preposition was anything a squirrel can do on the ladder. Well, this is now anything a citizen can do on their mobile app.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has meant both the demand landscape and expectations that people have in their interactions with government have changed for the foreseeable future.
But like many things in public sector technology, the ages of IT systems agencies are working off of get in the way of a more modern interaction that is like what exists in the commercial worlds.
As Sever pointed out, most of those systems are still run on the COBOL computer programming language that today is primarily used to maintain existing applications.
On top of the heightened demand, pandemic-related trend number two that Sever highlighted was the start of unwinding citizens from Medicaid’s continuous enrollments during 2023.
“Some of our governments were still very used to paper communication and our citizens are communicating electronically, so there's a mismatch,” Sever said. “Part of that is the way their rules are structured, the way their waivers are structured, but we’re helping our government partners recognize where that disconnect is so that we have better engagement with citizens.”
Sever described Conduent’s technology agenda as primarily focusing on developing and integrating tools that use logic and human-centered design principles in order to better structure the citizen interactions.
“We are always going to have to have the ability to walk a consumer through things,” Sever added. “It doesn't mean that call centers go away because there are going to be some consumers that can't self-service, but it also then allows our workers to utilize that same portal.”
During the summer, Sever took on the leadership role for Conduent’s government segment after approximately two years as Magellan Federal’s chief executive. Her three-decade public sector career also includes health leadership roles at companies including Maximus.
She said that one appealing aspect of joining Conduent is its “huge, untapped potential within the federal market” that the company previously “took our foot off the gas” from.
Her words, not ours.
“Part of my message to our team is it's a new day, new order, and we have a lot to offer the federal government in terms of effective and efficient services and outreach and access,” Sever said.