Local Government - Service Design

Small businesses across the state face a huge challenge when it comes to starting, growing or modifying their businesses. On average, it can take up to 200 days from the moment they start the council permits until they are ready to open.

The reason? A combination of lack of understanding of the processes involved by the business owners and, a siloed view of the process from the council staff members themselves,

It is key to say, that this is not caused by people, it’s a process problem that can be easily solved. 

“How might we deliver a better experience for small business owners who need council permits so that they can start trading?”

By designing an integrated and informative customer experience that is supported by the correct internal processes, capabilities and artefacts​

How We Helped

We used User Experience Design to improve the experience

We designed a four-week approach to take a multidisciplinary team from discovery to delivery. We worked as a team with the council staff members and state government representatives. We combined their government knowledge, with the customers’ experiences and our design expertise to achieve results that were:

  1. Impactful for the business owners and employees, making it easier for both
  2. Easy to implement in a short period of time (2 weeks) but had a vision for continuous improvement

We re-designed the program when Covid-19 started

We understood what was preventing state government and councils from doing programs online and designed a proposal that worked for both parties. Other consultancies that were delivering the program adjusted their delivery mode into our proposal that allowed for Better Approvals to reach their objective of doing 99% of Victorian councils by end of 2020.

Human-Centred approach

Bringing a project from state government into local government can be challenging. We took a human centred design approach to ensure that we were bringing citizens and council employees on the journey. 

Service Design Mindset

By mapping the end to end customer experience in a blueprint with processes, we managed to remove duplication and create smoother internal processes

Co-design Approach

Facilitating co-design sessions with employees and users to design both sides of the experience and enable better end results

Change Management

We asked the team to create what they thought the customer journey was. After interviewing customers, we come back and modified it based on new learnings

The Process

discover

current state

Kick-off workshop with Human-Centred Design and Agile activities for participants to gain knowledge

define

opportunity areas

Interviews with Small Business Owners with council staff members to gain insights and increase council engagement

Ideate & Test

solutions

Identification of potential solutions for each main key pain points, and understanding of their own systems

design

final product

Design of an end-to-end new customer experience and service design with a roadmap for the next 2 years.

deliver

and transform

Implementation of key changes (webpage design, self-assessment form, online application forms)

The Outcomes

Service Blueprint

With the future customer experience, processes and tech support. It also included KPI’s and how to test, learn and iterate for each instance before investing.

Prototypes and wireframes

This included email templates, infographics and other artefacts that are used in the new experience. In most cases we also designed and built their interactive forms and webpages.

Detailed report

Including insights, key opportunities outside the scope, implementation and communication plan, processes and technology requirements for the future.

Engaged cross-function team

The teams that worked with us during 4 weeks to design and implement the changes learned Human Centred Design and rapid prototyping, but the main change was changing their mindset to a Customer Centred and Change Agile Mindset

Our Team's Skills For This Project

Service Design

Workshop Facilitation

Agile Change Management

Stakeholder Management

Customer Experience Design

Process Design

Visual Design