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:
- Impactful for the business owners and employees, making it easier for both
- 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