ICYMI: From Fragmented to Frictionless: Unified Customer Experiences

At an ACT-IAC panel on moving from fragmented to frictionless, unified customer experiences, SSA’s Michelle Liu explains SSA’s Service Index, a framework and catalog mapping services across online, phone/IVR, and in-person channels to customer journeys, data, and processes to identify dead ends, gaps, and priorities. She illustrates friction with an SSI address-change journey that fails online and in IVR, forcing repeat intent/authentication and eventual field-office completion, and shows how the index supports channel parity, policy review (e.g., questioning unnecessary in-person SSI return-to-U.S. requirements), call routing, content alignment, and LLM-based call categorization (e.g., why customers call for tasks available online). 

Voyagers Program | ACT-IAC

A Hell of a Regiment: To Gettysburg and Beyond with the Twentieth Maine | ACT-IAC

Summary - A Hole in One with ACT-IAC

Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.

Learn more about membership at https://www.actiac.org/join.
Donate to ACT-IAC at https://actiac.org/donate.
 
Intro/Outro Music: See a Brighter Day/Gloria Tells
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound

(Episodes 1-159: Intro/Outro Music: Focal Point/Young Community
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound)

Transcript

Meghan Daly: [00:00:00] Good morning once again, if you all can take your seats.
Meghan Daly: Thank you, Martha.
Meghan Daly: Okay, we're gonna start, uh, panel two A from fragmented to frictionless, unified customer experiences.
Meghan Daly: All right. Today's session explores what it truly takes to move from fragmented to frictionless and towards a unified customer-centric service ecosystem. We're fortunate to be joined by leaders who are actively doing this work, often while navigating legacy systems, tight budgets and constraints, and real organizational resistance.
Meghan Daly: We're going to start our session by getting a deeper dive into the SSA Service index. I'm pleased to intro introduce you to Michelle Liu, director of the Internal Consulting Group at SSA. [00:01:00] Michelle leads service improvement in internal consulting efforts there helping teams identify opportunities to enhance customer experience, improve service metrics, expand self-service, and reduce operational costs.
Meghan Daly: Michelle's experience across local, state and federal government offers a unique cross-sector perspective on public service delivery. Her work has been recognized for fostering collaboration and driving meaningful improvements in how government serves the public. She's the architect of the agency's service index, an enterprise effort to map services across online, phone and in-person channels by connecting services to customer journeys, data and internal pros processes.
Meghan Daly: The index provides a framework for understanding how customers experience SSA services and helps identify gaps, reduce friction, and prioritize improvements across the agency. It's an impressive tool. Industry has replicated it as we are at Maximus and are using this to help other agencies identify and [00:02:00] solve service delivery problems.
Meghan Daly: Michelle, please join us on stage.
Michelle Lieu: Thank you, Megan. All right. Can you guys hear me? Yeah. And you guys can see the screen. So I'm gonna just dive right in 'cause we do have about 15 minutes, um, before we do the panel session. So the service index is, um, basically what Megan mentioned. It's a comprehensive catalog, but really it's a framework or a lens to think about the different types of services that an agency or organization offers to customers.
Michelle Lieu: And what are all the different channels that it can be done in. Um, I'm gonna dive right in. So this actually started back in 20 24, 20 25 ish. We noticed the pattern in our voice of customer, the pattern. What you see on the screen, um, it was customers basically saying, I tried something [00:03:00] online. I tried to call afterwards.
Michelle Lieu: I ultimately had to walk into the office. So this was just three of several, lots and hundreds of examples from 2024. Um, when we noticed this pattern, it made us think back to some of the questions, the main questions, right? Well, what are the different services that customers are trying to request from our agency?
Michelle Lieu: And what can actually be done online or in our different phone channels? Or what, what do they have to walk into the office for? And more importantly, what if a customer tries to do something in one channel but they can't? How do we transition them? So I'm gonna walk through this example of a customer, but first I'll see if you guys are awake after the break.
Michelle Lieu: How many of you have ever had to change your address with the government? Raise your hand. A lot, like over half the room. So for Social security, we have different types of programs that individuals can receive. Uh, this is Skyler, our SSI or supplemental security income [00:04:00] customer, um, title 16 type of program benefits.
Michelle Lieu: So let's take, Skyler has an Azure change. He, it's like, I wanna do it online. He goes online, identifies intent, right? Need to change my address, logs on to my SSA, and then bam, he hits a dead end. 'cause you can't, for this type of program, you can't actually change your address online. The website will tell him, Hey, sorry, call the National 800 number.
Michelle Lieu: When Skyler calls the national 800 number, he's gonna have to identify intent again. He's gonna have to authenticate again. And then he's actually gonna hit a dead end. 'cause we don't have the service available in our IVR. He's gonna have to wait on hold to speak to an agent. And the agent likely can't do it.
Michelle Lieu: They'll, they'll probably send a message to the local field office for the field office to do that because they have the trained technicians in that jurisdiction to actually complete the task. So by the time the customer gets to the local office, if they want it done immediately, instead of waiting for that [00:05:00] electronic message from the, a telephone agent center to send to the local field office, he's upset already.
Michelle Lieu: Right? I wanna change my address. Three exclamation marks, right? He's trying to do it in the office. He shows his ID or answers security questions to prove and authenticate he is who he says he is. And by then, at least the field office can do it. Um, by the end of all this, you have probably an upset customers if they started at the online channel, right?
Michelle Lieu: So, depends on where they started. Um, and one thing to keep in mind is, are we transferring authentication? Information. Is he giving the rental agreement each and every time he tries? That's a big question. So this example of a walkthrough of Skyler, our SSI claimant is just one line item of the service index.
Michelle Lieu: The service index has a whole bunch of tests. This is just a screenshot of it, but it identifies where the dead ends are, where the gaps are, where the yes answers are, which are like the green check marks of where you can actually [00:06:00] do business. Um, I always compare this to a library catalog, right? If you are an avid book reader, you might search for a book by author, by title on.
Michelle Lieu: Maybe and see, oh, do they have a physical hard copy book? Um, possibly at the library. I'll drive in and go get it. Right. Oh, I want to use my Kindle. Do they, do they have a ebook? Do they have an audiobook? Depending on what I see on that catalog, I might pursue one direction or another. But if I know they don't have it on Kindle, which like half the books I wanna read might not be on Kindle, I'm not gonna bother trying to search for it.
Michelle Lieu: Right? I'll just go to the channel that's available to me. So that's the beauty of this framework. This service index, which you'll learn more about in the next few minutes, um, allows the agency to think of like, put that hat on and kind of go through that lens and. Strategize, right? As we look to improving things, how can we all be on the same page, which we touched on in some of the earlier sessions.
Michelle Lieu: Um, so [00:07:00] how are teams using the index? Here's an example. When you're receiving social security benefits, you can request, and Ken's not here, but you can request to do voluntary tax withholding. Um, that way at the end of the year, you don't have to pay a whole bunch of taxes, right? You just say 5%, 7% each month from my monthly check.
Michelle Lieu: So this service was actually not available on our phone. So if someone called, I used to, I was a technician, I would pick up the phone and say, oh, you wanna voluntary tax withhold? Oh, that is an easy task, but you need to print out a form, sign it and snail mail it to us. I guess you could fax it, but I need the form before I could do the very simple percentage input.
Michelle Lieu: Um, luckily I think about two years ago we changed those nos to a yes, and now we can verbally attest it, so yay. Right? But our self-service channels are not necessarily, um, there yet. It's still on the, the left side. So online and IVR is important, right? If we are trying to do digital [00:08:00] first, we wanna make it available to the customers, and that's where the service index that lays everything out, you can target and say, oh, okay, well this is an easier type of task.
Michelle Lieu: What's the data behind it? And can I add it to the self-service channels so that I can kind of take, take the work off of the technician so they can focus on more complex, uh, cases. All right, so, oh, I didn't add this part, but we actually added it. Whoa. Online. First, let me go through, sorry. So we actually did add, um, the voluntary tax withholding online on my SSA.
Michelle Lieu: It was as ear early as I believe, August of last year. So that was really exciting. But even then when I was sitting, um, on some calls with our IVR folks, they were like, oh, they added it. We should add it to our roadmap. I'm like, yes, you should. Um, but that's where, you know, you have different teams working on different things and they might not be aware of what the other team's working on.
Michelle Lieu: And so if you have one, [00:09:00] I always say like Google Map, right? The service index where they know what the other team's working on actively trying to turn that no to a yes, whatever it may be. They can align and be on the same page. Um. So how, how else are teams using it? Um, this, I, I used to be a policy analyst before I came to headquarters at Social Security.
Michelle Lieu: So, uh, one item that we can dive into are all the policies and regulations. Why do we do certain things in certain channels? Why do we require face-to-face? Why can't it be on the phone, like the voluntary tax withholding example I just gave you? So you can dive into the statutory regulatory internal policy.
Michelle Lieu: If it's yes, across all three, it's probably one that's really, really difficult to change. Right? But if it's. Just an internal policy, or maybe it's a policy or a regulation that was written years and years, decades ago. Perhaps it's something that we wanna focus on. So I'll give you an example. Uh, we're gonna dive deep into the third one.
Michelle Lieu: Uh, going back to Skyler's [00:10:00] case, if you are receiving SSI benefits, you actually have to be physically present in the US to, to receive it. If you leave the country for 30 days or longer, when you come back into the country, we need to see you. So when I was a technician, customers would go to the office, be like, Ms.
Michelle Lieu: Lou, I've, I've come back, I've returned. I'm like, okay, wait. Have you been here 30 days? No, I returned yesterday. I'm like, okay, in 30 days I'm gonna schedule you an appointment to come back so I can see your face. Right? But why did we do that? Um, that was just the way that I was taught, that my mentor was taught.
Michelle Lieu: Um, I mean, it was just the workflow passed down. So if you dive deep into the policy, it does say, um. Provide or prove continuous presence, obtain an individual signed statement and supporting evidence in the form of a plane ticket or passport. The CFR, the code of federal regulations says you may be again, eligible for SSI in the month in which the 30 days end.
Michelle Lieu: Um, if you meet all other eligible, it doesn't [00:11:00] say, I need to see your face. Right? So why are we a requir customers to do that somewhere among all the policy, all the regulations. It, it just turned that way. And so for me, I think it was like the end of last year, I met with our OGC, um, renamed to legal and Policy and they were like, you're right.
Michelle Lieu: We don't need to see their face. And I'm like, okay. Uh, do we do a refresher like this is a lot of people walking in. I mean, if they're going on vacation for 30 days or longer, they're just out. They need to come back in and we need to see them. Um, I mean, think about how many appointment. Thoughts can be saved because of this, for the customer at least, and even for the, the employees too.
Michelle Lieu: So that's an example of how one team is using the index to dive deep into policy. Uh, another team is also diving into call routing. So, um, I'll kind of breeze through this slide for the sake of time and uh, dive deeper into the next one. But call routing, right? A customer calls social security. The bot says, how I, how can I help you?
Michelle Lieu: Customer says their intent. Um, we [00:12:00] were diving into phone flows, right? Where we would basically be like, is there something we can add so that if we know Skylar can't do his business, his address change with the IVR or even with the National 800 number agent, why don't we just route him directly to the local office?
Michelle Lieu: Why do we. Force him to go through that maze and hit those dead ends and then he goes to the field office on his own and starts all over again. Right. So that is the beauty of the index. It allows you to do things like call routing. Um, I know that we've talked a lot about ai, different types of things.
Michelle Lieu: There's always something at the back end. Um, I think FEU had mentioned an important knowledge base. This is our knowledge base now. Call categorization. So why do customers call and wait to speak to an employee? We fed the service index into our LLM and we sampled 200,000 calls one day last year. And we answered this question well, customers are calling us for these reasons.
Michelle Lieu: Thank goodness. It was the LLM like listening on the calls and categorizing it. 'cause it's a [00:13:00] lot for a human to do it. Right? But you can see, oh gosh, 10,000 people requested a benefit verification letter. You layer on those yes and nos from the service index. And thank goodness the, the bevy, the benefit verification letter is available online.
Michelle Lieu: Right? So then that makes me question why did people call bypass the IVR and wait to speak to an agent to get a benefit verification letter? It was available online, it was available on the IVR. Thank goodness the agent was able to print it and snail mail it to them. Right. Let's look at the next one.
Michelle Lieu: 25,000 people called to schedule an appointment to file for benefits. That's a lot for this one day, but. It's not available online, right? It's not available on the IVR. So it makes sense why they called and waited to speak to an employee and the agent helped them schedule it. Look at the next one. Appeal a decision that SSA made.
Michelle Lieu: So they disagreed with the decision. You could do it online. You can't do it in the IVR. Look at that last item. You can't do it with the agent. So by the time they got on the phone with the [00:14:00] agent, oh, thank you for holding. Oh, you wanna file an appeal? I'm sorry, I can mail you the form or I'll, I'll text you the link.
Michelle Lieu: Um, and when I did this presentation, I think like last month, the IVR team actually interrupted me and said, we added a wait message to where if someone says appeal, like it'll say, Hey, you know, the agent will do their best to help, but you can really only file it online or in. By mail. Right? And that way maybe people would hang up because they would get the link and the form that they need to do it online.
Michelle Lieu: So this is an example, um, of the power of the index and what it can, what types of assessments and analysis it can let you do. Uh, we can align the communication that we have between channels, right? So we had a different team working on the online FAQs. It was different from the IVR FAQs. It was so fun for me to try to get the teams to work together.
Michelle Lieu: They had different ID numbers, different content, and I was like, are we sharing the same information to the customer? You should always be sharing the same, very similar, consistent [00:15:00] messaging, so that way they're not shopping different channels for better information if it's consistent across the organization.
Michelle Lieu: Right. Um, another team, the ssa.gov or web team was trying to reimagine how to, um, kind of. Reorganize the homepage. 'cause it was very task specific. Like, I want a benefit verification letter. I want a 10 99. I want, like, if you don't know what you want, you technically could do it by life events, right? Life events, customer journeys, um, business processes, the index covers all of it.
Michelle Lieu: And so the web team basically used the index to look at the different life events, the triggering life events. What are things that happens to customers that causes them to come to the agency? How would it look if we organized the website based off of that? That's the, the screenshot that you see. I mean, it could change, but it's just kind of giving them a different framework to work off of for their online channel.
Michelle Lieu: Um, even the online content, we do it very specifically where [00:16:00] the customer task and background is at the top. The prioritized channel, if it's available online, is right there. And then other available channels is right below. But the important piece is the content, right? What is the content saying? Is it sign in?
Michelle Lieu: Good luck. Or is it sign in and click this and you'll get a PDF immediately at your fingertips. Right? Because some customers think if I do it online, you're still gonna mail it to me. I might as well go into the office so you can print it. So the specific content provided to like in the website actually matters.
Michelle Lieu: And we learned that as we looked at data. So here's a screenshot of the data that the, the service index offers. Um, and it tracks it by overall transactions, online tracks, transactions, and all the different channels. If you dive deep, you can see how the different channels kind of interplay with each other.
Michelle Lieu: Um, it's been fascinating to track it over the last two years because you can see as online transactions go up, maybe the phone transactions go down. It's not that they're not meeting their metric, it's that more people are being [00:17:00] self-sufficient to do it self-service, right? So that's the data piece of it.
Michelle Lieu: Uh, and uh, this is a screenshot of how the service index looks like in Excel. We do have it in other platforms, but that will be for a Future Act IAC event, uh, where we dive deeper, um, and possibly do a workshop to, to see how we can apply it. But here are some of the insights. For the sake of time, I'm, I'm actually gonna zoom right through maybe till the end.
Michelle Lieu: The insights that this data gives us is fascinating. Um, you can kind of see at a glance the health of the organization and we are not done collecting tasks yet. 'cause I only focus on field office specifically. But if you start adding on different types of tasks from the backend components, then you can see, oh my gosh, only 34% of our tasks are available online.
Michelle Lieu: Um, can we add more to it? Um, the number has been steadily increasing, which is really amazing. But there are certain things, like for the national calls, like, oh, how's our IVR versus [00:18:00] how's our. Agent centers that 29% and 53%, that's the difference between one 800 number or another 800 numbers, like a national number or a local number.
Michelle Lieu: Customers don't know the difference, so it'd be challenging for them to be like, pick the right number. Right? It's like lottery. Um, okay, so the main takeaway, sorry, I am a little over. Uh, so the main takeaway is, you know, the service index really is to help employees understand the current state, help executives understand what is the current state, what is the lay of the land.
Michelle Lieu: Uh, it's a Google map, right? Uh, we really wanted to identify the service gaps, where are the dead ends? And we wanted to give guidance, right? So that you can go from what you need to do, intent to task completion. Uh, with the task completion, you can bridge those gaps. Why do we have dead ends in the first place?
Michelle Lieu: We should bridge 'em. And if it doesn't work out in one channel, pass that information, that authentication everything to the next channel. A warm handoff, right? Uh, from there. [00:19:00] That's really the short term to bridge the gaps. It really should be simplifying, streamlining, and automating where we can, why are we making it a maze to do business with the government?
Michelle Lieu: It should be a simple, straightforward path. Um, and ensure clear communication and channel parity is one big item. So the service index really helps with the first two items specified, and the teams that I mentioned, the examples of how the different teams are using the service index are all in the green.
Michelle Lieu: There's actually much more, but we only had time to go over a few. Um, and this is important because, uh, as teams are strategizing and trying to improve services, we want them to be on the same page. I think it was Chris that mentioned like a unified strategy, right? How are you doing a unified strategy if there's not one source of truth, one knowledge management.
Michelle Lieu: That's what the service index gives. Um, always gotta keep in mind that there are policies related to government services before. Improving things, but you can [00:20:00] always deep dive into them. Uh, so with that, I will actually end here. Thank you so much to act IAC for inviting me to speak at this event and to share the service index work with you all.
AUDIENCE: Thank you, Michelle. If we can have Tricia and Steve join us on stage
AUDIENCE: and Michelle, every time I see that index, I learn something new and get more inspired. Uh, so thank you. So Tricia and Steve, we please introduce yourself and your, explain your role at your, um, agency, your company. 
Trisha Dang: Hi, my name is Tricia Dang and I'm with the Veterans Experience Office at va. And my role within the resident experience office is really as Chief Innovations Officer.
Trisha Dang: Great. 
Steve Boberski: My name is Steven Berki. I'm the public sector Chief Technology Officer for [00:21:00] Genesis. And, uh, I wear multiple hats, but mostly I'm, uh, uh, the focus of, uh, the bridge between product management, the customer sales, and uh, and, and sort of the gap filling. Right. You know, translation. 
AUDIENCE: Great. Thank you. Okay, we're gonna just dive right into our questions here.
AUDIENCE: Um, so the first question, uh, for Michelle and Tricia, where have you seen the biggest friction points caused by channel silos, digital contact center or field? And what was the first actionable step your agency took to break those down? Michelle?
Michelle Lieu: So for me, now that you guys have seen the index, trying to gather that information was so challenging. Our structure in our organization is a team is created, or I guess focused around specific. Programs, right? What title, what type of benefits you're receiving. And then it goes down to the like channel level, and then it goes to the system [00:22:00] and then the product.
Michelle Lieu: So you have dozens, hundreds of teams just focused on different things. So that, you know, going back to that unified message that Chris had mentioned is so important. What is your north star that you're trying to achieve? What's the, the main thing that you're trying to do? And is it the same in every single team, sub team, sub, sub, sub team?
Michelle Lieu: If it's not and everyone has their own directives, then your strategy. I mean, it might be there, but everyone's just going at their own pace, working on their own thing. And when you step back and look at the full picture, I mean, it's enlightening just to see it.
Trisha Dang: I think for us, uh, one thing that's really important to think about is that regardless of the channel that our customers choose, we've had to step back and look at what that customer journey is within that channel. It's really important for us to think about, you know, how they might navigate through that channel.
Trisha Dang: At VA, for example, we spent the last 10 years really, really focused on [00:23:00] digital first, right? So we've really thought about how volumes were coming into our call centers, or even to our walk-ins and our mail, and then we enable those transactions, those high volumes transactions online. But what we learned really quickly was it was great that we allowed our customers to start online, but that's all they could do, right?
Trisha Dang: So, you know, through that learning process, we learned that our customers really want to build a complete, their complete transaction online. So again, working through. The fact that they actually had to call our call centers to understand the status of their claim, right when, after they've submitted their claims and wait for mail for decision letters.
Trisha Dang: You know, it's been not a short process. 'cause you know, as you just mentioned, you've gotta look at regulations, what you're required to do, what you're not. Is it just policy? Is it process? Can you change that? It's been a process for us, but it's worked through so that we can ensure that when our customers start on a channel with us online, for example, on va.gov, that they can actually complete that online and not have to jump around.
Trisha Dang: So that was really important for thinking [00:24:00] about fully what is that full journey and can you actually complete it within that? Obviously as you open up new channels, there's always gonna be lots of questions that come in and you're gonna have to have support for that channel. For us, you know, we weren't fast enough, we weren't thinking about the staffing that was required in order to support those new digital capabilities.
Trisha Dang: Our digital team was just much faster, which is not a bad problem to have. And so, you know, consideration for that again, is thinking about the support side on any channel that you open. Do you actually have the resources to support the new channels that you've enabled? In addition to that, um, you've gotta also make sure similar to what you know, IRS has experienced, that you're folks that are providing that support have the same data that your customers are experiencing through those digital channels.
Trisha Dang: So making sure the data's consistent so that if they are looking at a status online, they can actually have a call center person who can answer what that status means and sees the same information. And I think the last step that we've made that, which is the newer step in this space, is also working towards, um, cobras.
Trisha Dang: So enabling tools that allowed our [00:25:00] staff to able to see what our customers are doing and help them through that process, whether that be navigating login, you know, troubleshooting support, or just actually completing a transactions as well. 
AUDIENCE: Thank you. And Steve, how has Genesis helped agencies reduce silos?
AUDIENCE: Caused by friction? 
Steve Boberski: Well, we've pretty much done everything they both said they wanted to do. No, um, honestly, the first, the most important thing is, like you said, is to unify the experience and make it common across all channels, right? So, um, the benefit of, of, if you really wanna do join journey orchestration, you have to know what's happening in all the channels.
Steve Boberski: And it doesn't matter how they come in, you want them to have the same knowledge back, right? So you have to normalize that journey. In order to do that, you have to capture that data. Um, everybody talks about ai. We are an, an AI orchestration company. That's our, that's our, that's our focus. That's what we do.
Steve Boberski: And being able to have that journey end to end where you can pass on, uh, authentication, where you can pass on, you know, if I gather, uh, through whatever digital channel chat IVR and they say [00:26:00] they're, they're due to fill out an application, um, and somehow it reaches an agent, um, by the time it gets the agent, the agent knows exactly why.
Steve Boberski: They have a transcript of the call where they can see exactly what they're looking to do. And uh, they'll have with copilot, which is our agent assist, they'll have next recommended, next best action. Hey, by the way, they probably want this form. Here it is. And if you'd like to send it, you can send in the channel.
Steve Boberski: So we unify that experience across the board and make that that journey whole. Um, and then with our agent, ai, which ag agent, virtual agent, you can now sort of take some of the more road tasks and just take it away from the agent altogether and let them focus on more complex things. So when you see people start to implement the more advanced AI technology at the contact center, everybody starts focusing on heuristics.
Steve Boberski: Like, Ooh, I wanna see the call handling time go down. I wanna see wait times go down. What you're gonna see is a really significant increase in first call resolution. 'cause we have access to all that data. Now those silos are now broken down. We can present it. Some of the handling kinds might go up because they're now working more complex issues.
Steve Boberski: So it's not necessarily a bad thing. When you see that metric at first, like, oh. [00:27:00] Handling it's agents are work spending a lot more time on the calls. Yeah. But they're doing a lot less silly things. Right. Things that can be resolved upfront and in order for us to, to, to see that journey, um, you know, to be able to, to be able to derive what's happening, to be, to be able to plug in every part of the journey.
Steve Boberski: That's, that's kind of what we do. That's what journey orchestration is to us. And then the real time metrics you could get when you start seeing the experience that you had, right? Which is, wow, every time someone does this, they end up at an agent. Why is there a problem with the website? Is it something we could change?
Steve Boberski: It, it drives process outside the contact center. And that's really what's important. And that's what we do. That's what we really focus on. Technology is an enabler. It could, sure, there could be some replacement of tasks, but really it's all about enabling, uh, the mission. 
AUDIENCE: And I think an important thing there is also, you know, having the customer call once and get their task completed rather than to have to call back.
Steve Boberski: Right. And if they do call back, you know that they called why they called what they tried to do. You have that entire record. 
AUDIENCE: Yeah. Great. All right, Tricia. Um, how's the VA aligning websites, [00:28:00] self-service tools and live agent support into one experience strategy? Um, especially when serving populations with very different needs and levels of digital readiness.
Trisha Dang: I think that's really core to our strategy. And in doing that, again, you know, as we are looking at all the problems our customers have, it's really, again, important to think about that journey. And we start with our customers at the center, making sure that we're listening to those voice, that we understand their journey, and that we actually understand all those pain points and we're measuring throughout that process.
Trisha Dang: And again, making sure that we're tackling it in a way in which it actually resolves our problem, not just the way we perceive their problems are. That's really important. I think, again, especially as you know, we're part of the Veterans Experience Office. Our charge is really to make sure that our, the voices are heard as we conduct business day to day.
Trisha Dang: Um, part of that is gonna be, again, talking to your customers, designing with them in mind. Testing and validation with your customers before you deploy. And that's actually a constant process for us, you know, after every interaction that occurs, whether that's [00:29:00] online or on the phone, right? We do have, um, feedback mechanisms so we actually understand where our customers are struggling, and we use that to improve our, our services.
AUDIENCE: And Michelle, how about SSSA for that question? Um, I can repeat it if you'd like. 
Trisha Dang: Sure, 
AUDIENCE: sure. Um, how are your, how is SSA aligning websites, self-service tools, and live agent support? I, I know we saw the index, but, um, you know, how is it, um, you know, the different needs and the different, um, levels of digital readiness?
Michelle Lieu: I'm gonna start off with a small story. Who shops at Costco? Oh, it's like half the hands. So maybe about five or six years ago, our local Costco put in, they took out like four lanes and they put in self-service checkouts. But it took a few months for them to do that. And so when I would go with my mom and dad, my mom would be like, who's gonna use that?
Michelle Lieu: I'll never use it. I'm like, but mom, like I'm gonna use it all the time. And [00:30:00] the more people go to self checkout, it's gonna free up the cashiers to help you. Right. Ultimately. Um, and my mom's like, oh. I didn't really think about that. So as the years progress, guess what? She uses the self checkout now. Um, and my brother just doesn't wanna go to Costco.
Michelle Lieu: He'll end up with like a shopping cart of like $500. How did that happen? Right. And so he just goes online. So when we talk about different levels of digital readiness, I think back to all of that, and Costco, I mean, any organization, any agency, they're trying to look at what is the task the customer's trying to do?
Michelle Lieu: Are they trying to shop, they're trying to check out, they're trying to look for something and they can't find the item on the aisle. Right? So if the ultimate goal is to check a customer out, then what's the process? I mean. You are in a cashier line, you're lining up, you have to put everything onto the, the conveyor belt.
Michelle Lieu: It goes, they scan the barcode. Very similar process. What's the main fields, the main data that you need? Well, when you go to the self-checkout, same thing. You roll your [00:31:00] cart right up, there's like a little thing that comes out that you could put your items on, and then you scan the barcode, right? If there's any issues, an employee will come to help bridge that gap.
Michelle Lieu: Same with a cashier. If there's any issues that something doesn't scan, they might have a manager come out to like hurry up the line along. So this example makes me think of back to the agency, right? If you are designing in silos and optimizing for your specific team, it's hard. But if you go back to the basics, what is the customer actually trying to do?
Michelle Lieu: They're trying to get a social security card. They're trying to apply for retirement. From there, you're like, okay, well they might start online, but they might end up in our office. They're gonna get a letter about. Something that they did online, we should line all that up so it supports each other, right.
Michelle Lieu: One strategy, um, as opposed to kind of fragmented all across. 
Trisha Dang: I would also add that, you know, because we're talking AI and because we're talking digital first and lots of things [00:32:00] that are in industry and being introduced in the federal government, it's also really important for us to also step back and make sure it's actually a digital feature.
Trisha Dang: Your customers want what your population looks like. So our population right now loves to call us, right? They, they do. So regardless of how we might push digital first, they love to have a conversation with a live person. They love to go into our facilities and hang out. So I think again, it's really understanding your population and balancing that and testing and validating that throughout the process, making sure that they would adopt to it.
Trisha Dang: You're not gonna want those folks that call and say, agent, agent, agent, right? Or, or do the same similar things in a digital component where it's like, I don't wanna be forced to do that. Again, making sure that you understand your customer's preferences and the way they wanna conduct business with you, and providing that as a preference is gonna be key to that strategy.
AUDIENCE: Great point. And for Steve, how is Genesis helping agencies move into one experience strategy? 
Steve Boberski: Well, so we do a number of things. For example, what you guys were talking [00:33:00] about just now, um, you know, bots for a long time were just, you knew when you were talking to a bot and you were, you'd go to a retail website, you were assaulted by a bot.
Steve Boberski: How can I help you? I don't need you to click go, oh, are you sure you don't need help? Right. So, you know, everybody's sort of soured on them for a while, right. But. This technology's moving fast. So let's say maybe you moved to virtual agents now on your front end, right? And you haven't gone agenda yet.
Steve Boberski: That's fine. You're a virtual agent. But if you haven't revisited that technology because you think, well, I've got that taken care of, let's move something new. You have to revisit the entire journey from end to end. Because, um, what happens now, uh, is you're just talking about intent. You're talking about deriving, uh, with general statements, uh, of exactly what the intent of the, of the person is.
Steve Boberski: You get a motion, uh, as well. So you could tell when someone's angry, and then there's value in that data, right? No. Instead of how, what, what, how, is the question is how do they feel about the question, right? And that helps you make all kinds of changes and process. So we, we pride that data, we capture that across, you know, whether it's sentiment, analysis or intent.
Steve Boberski: Uh, and we make sure that that's available and ready for analysis. But, but that's [00:34:00] super important. But the other thing is what, when we talk about transforming the journey, it really is about making sure that you have visibility at every point, right? So if you, if, if something gets lost, if you, maybe you're.
Steve Boberski: IVR is front-ended by a different point solution, and you, you know, they could, it provides access to a knowledge base, but then when they come back to an agent, all that data is lost. It's not transferring to, and they don't know what the transaction was. And you might not have live realtime data on that.
Steve Boberski: So you can't take actions. You might, you know, decide, oh, look, we need to hire more agents on for this shift because we're always getting pummeled. But it turns out there's something happening on that website at that time that you don't know because it's, it's off of the ether. Right. So if you could unify the experience.
Steve Boberski: Uh, from the front, from front, from left to right, you could say in to out. And it doesn't matter what channel it is, as long as you're capturing that data. And at every stage, what we call a predictive engagement, predictive routing, it hits the agent. Then you have the analytics behind it. All those things are tied together.
Steve Boberski: You can't really do a full journey if you don't have the metrics in the data of what's happening at each point. So what we do is [00:35:00] we present that unified experience across the board, and then you know exactly why someone's, and you could dial right in and say, wow, um, we did an outbound campaign and it was not well received based on the, what we were hearing or, uh, you know, anything from major training to, to focus of a process.
Steve Boberski: So, uh, we bring all that together by giving a single view from end to end. 
AUDIENCE: Okay. Great. And that's actually a perfect segue to the next question and the importance of data. Um, what, what are some of the practical steps, um, you've taken to give agents and customers access to that shared data? Mm-hmm. 
Steve Boberski: Oh, back to me.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, back to you. 
Steve Boberski: Well, you know, um, a, a lot of people have, you know, they want to, everybody understands data is, is the key, right? And it's, and now with ai, it's a new vulnerability, right? It's an attack plane, right? When you start introducing artificial artificial intelligence, you also introducing a new vulnerability, right?
Steve Boberski: So now it's, it's, wow, I don't have to necessarily corrupt. I don't have to do denial service attack. If I could get to manipulate the data, I can get to say whatever I want. That's a new attack plan. So you have to protect that. And, and, and we [00:36:00] do that. We help them do that. But, um, overall, I kind of just lost my face.
Steve Boberski: What? 
AUDIENCE: Uh, so yeah. So what practical steps have you taken to give agents and customers access to shared data in real time about 
Steve Boberski: They don't have to repeat. Sorry about that. So, so the, you know, the, where I was going with the, with the, although the data's siloed in, in different regions, a lot of people wanna unify the data before they make a transaction or, or transformation stage.
Steve Boberski: It's not necessary because what you're gonna present to a virtual agent or agent is never going to change where the data came from may change, right? You might consolidate it, but it's, it's, it's all gonna go to the same place. So we can, through API dips data dip, so we can manage access to that data securely, whether it's stored in our FedRAMP boundary or someone else's, um, without you having to worry about consolidating it.
Steve Boberski: You can consolidate it on the way, but we break that down and present that unified, you know, front end before you're done with that. So you don't have to, you don't have to have a massive data transformation project before you implement this technology. Part of the benefit of the [00:37:00] technology, especially when you get to knowledge management, which is being able to, our knowledge fabric, being able to access all these different databases and come up with the right answer, the right response.
Steve Boberski: That's something we take on and allows you to focus on other parts of the journey. 
AUDIENCE: Great. And Tricia, for the va, um, I know we spoke a little bit yesterday around, um, some of the, the work you're doing around data, if you can speak to that. 
Trisha Dang: Sure, sure. So Steve mentioned you don't have to do that massive backend transformation at va.
Trisha Dang: We started with understanding the back, the backend transformation. You know, something just as simple as addresses. When you look at the breadth of services that VA offers, that differs everywhere. So we actually did take the time to, you know, understand that when we're talking about a person's address where we mail to or who we call, we wanted that to be a consistent across VA, for example.
Trisha Dang: So we did do a lot of work in the backend, both on process policy and. Data management transformations to make sure that we were seeing and saying all the same things. We weren't causing our customers to say, I've changed it on this channel with this line of business when I was trying to [00:38:00] get insurance, but I'm getting healthcare now.
Trisha Dang: And it's a different process and different people and you actually don't have any information. So I think again, for us, it's been important to actually look at that and standardize the way that we did that. I would say, you know, what Steve talked about, you know, and what IRS is striving for too, with trying to get to passing of information across channels for authentication.
Trisha Dang: So you don't have to re-authenticate, you don't have to ate information. I would say that for us, that's a goal. We are way far from that, but we have. Goals to get to that so that that could be a seamless experience. We want to both, yes. Authenticate and not have to re-authenticate across channels and not just have to authenticate again when you transfer for escalation.
Trisha Dang: We do wanna also at VA strive towards escalation of calls, right? So we're thinking about across channels. Um, and it's a goal and it's a goal that I think our partner industry partners could assist us with. We wanna be able to start a digital transaction, but escalate to voice and video based on complexity and based on the kind of [00:39:00] needs of czar.
Trisha Dang: So that, for us is, is a long-term goal. 
Steve Boberski: Well, and if I could just comment, you know, when you talk about the, the, the authentication side of the house, it's not just a more apathetic experience. 'cause you don't have to do it 19 times. It's also more secure because every time you have to reenter that data at a different channel, it's a vulnerability where someone could intercept, whether it's audio, whether it's on the network or something, if you can pass it on, but it's already encrypted inside and it just moves to the next stage.
Steve Boberski: You don't have to re-authenticate. That's, that's inherently more secure. And that's something that people sometimes overlook. There's a benefit there as well. So it's a better experience and it's a more secure experience. So it's, it's a sort of a really focused point for us. 
AUDIENCE: Great. Thank you. This question is for, for all of our panelists here.
AUDIENCE: Uh, what is one lesson or framework from your agency or company that other organizations could apply immediately when moving to customer-centric service delivery? Michelle. 
Michelle Lieu: I think, well this is a CX summit too, right? So starting with the customer, right? Um, I mean I've worn so many [00:40:00] different hats across the agency and every position that I've had, you kind of hone in on that position.
Michelle Lieu: When I was a policy analyst, everything revolved around policy. Well, what does the policy say? This policy links to that regulation. What does that say? Uh, when I worked on the website, it was more like what does the content, what is, what are we communicating out? What are we emailing to customers? It all kind of hones in on your focus area, on the position that you're in.
Michelle Lieu: But I think always starting back to what is the customer actually trying to do and mapping it. We always talk about like customer journey mapping, process mapping. And sometimes when I'll say that to people, they'll roll their eyes and I'm like, no, it's so important to understand the full journey. How are you supposed to fix something that you can't pinpoint what's actually wrong?
Michelle Lieu: Right? So I think always going back to that would help. 
Trisha Dang: I feel like we've covered this. Very similar, right? Especially again in the Veterans Experience Office, our charge is to make sure those voices are heard. So for us [00:41:00] it really is, again, starting with having conversations with your customers, really both quantitative and qualitative information.
Trisha Dang: Using that to drive what you focus and what you prioritize. We're all in an environment with a lot of competing priorities. Are you sure you're solving the right problem is really kind of key for us. What is, to your point, what is the customer trying to achieve? Right? And then again, making sure that to that out, that process, the customer is in the middle.
Trisha Dang: You know, it was a change for me. I mean, I've been with VA longer than I thought I would've been. You know, I started out in startups, but I got to DC and started with VA in 2009, and it has been a journey of watching VA progress to. We're not allowed to talk to our customers. That requires OMB approval.
Trisha Dang: Two, yes, we are allowed to talk to our customers. We talk to our customers all the time. Depending on what problem we're trying to solve, we will make sure that's the right problem and we're getting their feedback throughout that process. 
Steve Boberski: Well, you know, one of the things we advocate, uh, also is, is, you know, focus on business [00:42:00] outcomes.
Steve Boberski: When people wanna transform or move to new technology, they get very excited about the new technology. It's great. We have it on, we can fix everything with a bot or ai. It's awesome. Uh, not true, right? But really it's, it's important. You know, there's a propensity to lift shift to the government. It's easy, right?
Steve Boberski: You wanna move it, you wanna replicate it. We know how it works. Training's easier, all that great stuff. But it's a, you know, technology's changed. Some of the reasons you're doing, some of the things you're doing in your contact center today is because that was the only way to do it with the technology you had.
Steve Boberski: But more importantly, it's always important to focus on business requirements, will get functional requirements. Functional requirements beget technical requirements. If you start with the technical requirements, you're going backwards. So start with the business requirements, do a wipe, you know, just do some brainstorming, like go up there and every time the phone rings, I wish I could brew a cup of coffee.
Steve Boberski: We could actually do that. But the point is, you start getting people think differently about what could we really be doing? Uh, uh, you know, bring and make sure you make sure you include the end users. Every time you guys have a discussion about this, all the technologists love to huddle up and be the, we'll do a pilot inside the technology group.
Steve Boberski: Well, that's, they're gonna make it work. It's what they do, [00:43:00] right? So it's not necessarily effective. It's really important to have a really broad stakeholder group when you're doing these kind of transformations. That's 
AUDIENCE: great point. Yeah. It can't be done in a vacuum. Okay. This question's for Michelle and Tricia.
AUDIENCE: Um, of the universal challenges, legacy systems, budget constraints, workforce readiness, organizational resistance, which one has proven the hardest at your agency and what breakthrough finally move things forward? 
Michelle Lieu: I would say. Organizational resistance and workforce readiness, they kind of go hand in hand.
Michelle Lieu: Um, as we improve technology, as we adopt ai, as we change business processes or we update policies, regulations, I think it's challenging when you have a workforce who's just used to doing things a certain way, right? And FEU had talked about trust. It's so big. And if you try to force change before the workforce is ready, you lose that trust.
Michelle Lieu: Um, and when, when anything [00:44:00] is new, it's always a bit scary, right? Change is hard, um, easier for some folks, but still hard overall. Um, and so I think organizational readiness is something that agencies need a focus on to build that trust and to make sure that people are comfortable as, as the environment changes.
Trisha Dang: I would agree with that. You know, again, for us, if you think about the challenges VA faces, they're trying to balance, you know, we're trying to balance thinking about health outcomes, provider access with, um, compensations and others. So there's just like, how fast can we process? How much appointment, how many appointments can we get in to make sure we're accomplishing what we need to do with, again, experience.
Trisha Dang: It's been a challenge and I think, you know, our office was actually set up as a, an answer to a really difficult time in va. So the Veterans Experience Office was stood up to address these challenges. And so for us that for va, that was the first step of VA saying, Hey, your experience actually is important just as it is for us [00:45:00] to make sure that you've got the right health outcomes.
Trisha Dang: Make sure that we process the claims in your insurance. And again, that was really critical for VA organizationally, and I. Would have to also say it's been reinforced by the Hill, right? With the Improving Veterans Act of 2025, which codifies veterans experience and making sure that VA continues to consider, again, like our Veterans Trust in VA and what that experience looks like.
AUDIENCE: Trisha and Steve. Um, what was one challenge and breakthrough that you helped an agency do to move forward? 
Steve Boberski: I pick one of the cooler ones. Um. 
AUDIENCE: Is there that many? Yeah. 
Steve Boberski: Yeah. A lot. A lot of different ones. Trying to think of one of the, one more germane. So we have a, a very, very large federal agency that, um, happened to be struggling with their front end, IVR as a matter of fact because it was not, uh, it wasn't integrated, but it also just wasn't performing from metro perspective, right?
Steve Boberski: So it was, uh, what, so we had to get, you know, what's really the problem are people just, it was, [00:46:00] it's utterances. Like, you know, I can't handle them. Is there too much background noise? Is it I can't handle the volume because of the size of the field they wanna fill out? And, um, for us, uh, we brought in some specialists that could sit down with the agency and say, uh, here, what are you trying to do?
Steve Boberski: What are you doing now? And what, how can we help? And then, you know, do a proof of concept, right? And then, and, and, and then just execute. So what we were able to, uh, we displaced the front end system, but that wasn't the goal. The goal was to enhance the experience that just happened to be the best path at the time.
Steve Boberski: But really what it did is it opened up that, that the rest of the journey, 'cause now they had that in. Experience. And they, they found out that some of the reasons people were calling, uh, weren't why they thought they were. And, and now you, you get the visibility they didn't even have before. So it was sort of an extra surprise, like we fixed a problem but generated new content that they could action on.
Steve Boberski: And that was, uh, that was a really exciting win. 
AUDIENCE: Great. And Michelle, if you could redesign your customer service ecosystem from scratch, what's the one capability you would priorit prioritize [00:47:00] for the future 
Michelle Lieu: from scratch? 
Steve Boberski: Magic wand. 
Michelle Lieu: I know. I think
Michelle Lieu: I would like a closed loop process where, 'cause we, I mean we intake customer feedback and at one point, um, maybe it was like two years, actually it was before the index, we had to scrub our PII off. It wasn't like automatic yet, so I was reading thousands of feedback every single day. Um, and just deleting.
Michelle Lieu: You know, information like in terms of like PII, personal identifying information and some of the things that I would read, I'm like, oh my gosh, I was a technician. I can help them resolve this. I can do this. So I know that there are certain companies who would actually act on that feedback to, to, to close the loop and try to resolve the issue with the customer.
Michelle Lieu: So for me, that's a big one, at least in what I've seen. Um, it's good that we are actually collecting it and we're acting on it. We're coming up with [00:48:00] strategies, but to be able to, you know, if I designed it from scratch, I would put that in there too so that we can close it. 
AUDIENCE: And Steve, same question. What, what, what would you do, what would be your, 
Steve Boberski: uh, change the entire procurement process?
Steve Boberski: No, um, uh. I, I, I, I think I really would just focus on, on, uh, making sure everybody would just go take a step back, like you said, and, and, and really focus on the business outcomes. Because I love selling technology because I love what the technology does, and that's great, but I only love it, but I'm solving problems.
Steve Boberski: Uh, and, and if you don't understand the, the journey mapping that you talk about, understanding what's happening at every step of the phase, if you're not taking the time to really map out that journey with whatever tool you choose, um, you're really doing yourself a disservice. It's really easy to drop something in, to fix a problem at one, at a time.
Steve Boberski: But if you're not really looking at the end, end and, and not just for one journey, you, you could pick one to start with, but you need to have the same process applied, right? 'cause it's gonna generate process change across the company if, if, to encourage people to just take a step back and, [00:49:00] and, and absolutely focus on.
Steve Boberski: I, I say left or right 'cause I'm an engineer and I draw stuff. Like a call goes in, it goes this way. But, um, the entire process, right? What happens at every engagement? What is the outcome that you desire? And, you know, if you focus, we, we always talk about empathy as a service, and we really think that that's important, right?
Steve Boberski: Um, if you are improving the experience for the agent, you're exp proving the experience for the customer. All those other metrics take care of themselves, right? Because you, your turnover goes down. Training rates, costs go down. 'cause age of retention is higher when we start enabling the technology at the right point, right?
Steve Boberski: How do I handle a surge? Well, you can throw some agent stuff in there now and that, but also make sure when you hire new people, they get the same access to knowledge that the other people have, right? Makes the experience better. Happier customer, happier agent. Tall handling, time goes down. That just happens, right?
Steve Boberski: If you so those things, if you focus on that, on the journey end to end, make sure empathy's part of that service, you'll see all the metrics you care about getting, handling, time call, time processing. That all takes care of itself every time. Okay. 
AUDIENCE: Thank you Steve. [00:50:00] So Michelle, how has, um, especially with the index, how has SSA aligned all the different SEP separate teams, the digital, the IT field ops around shared outcomes and metrics?
Michelle Lieu: I think the index is a starting point. Um, I like that across our agency, um, executives are bought into, you know, the customer, what is the customer trying to do. We, we do focus on individual metrics, but when you see it all kind of lined together, it's just, it's so powerful. I mean, just because call times go up doesn't mean that it's bad.
Michelle Lieu: Maybe we're focusing on first contact resolution now 'cause we have a stronger like, AI system on the backend where technicians who might not have known the answer previously are using this system to look things up. Um, so the more we improve, I think the, the, the stronger. The results are in terms of getting more buy-in [00:51:00] to try to address and pinpoint that same strategy across.
Michelle Lieu: And I think keeping that, like that North star we always hear about, right? The, the goal in mind, no matter where you are in the agency, what you're working on, where you're at, whether it's at the beginning, the end, the business process, the policy, having that one unified goal helps so significantly. 
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: So we have a few more minutes left. Um, I would just say if you can each take one more minute just to kind of what, like one key point, one last key point that you wanna make, um, before we open it up to questions. Michelle. 
Michelle Lieu: So I think that when, when it comes to actually in the lift ride over, I was chatting with the driver and um, he eventually figured out what I was doing and where I was coming.
Michelle Lieu: And he's like, well, you know, what's the biggest takeaway? I mean, everything just seems so challenging. And I mean, that's how it always is. There's always something to fix. There's always fires literally everywhere. I think. Um, one of my former Rosses would say, it's so hard to [00:52:00] fly the plane and build the plane at the same time, right?
Michelle Lieu: You're gonna be missing parts and like, oh, hopefully the plane doesn't like fall or crash or whatever. Um, I think that when everything feels. So critical, so important. It's so challenging to know where to start. Um, and that's, I mean, that was the index. I was like, I have a lot of white hairs probably from just trying to build a, like a knowledge base.
Michelle Lieu: Um, and ultimately, you know, one step at a time, focus on the customer, focus on like write down, write down that simple but powerful message of what is it you are trying to do, your goal, the customer's goal. And from there, just knowledge dump everything and everything you can find. Eventually, once it's on paper, for me at least, it's so easy to see the connections and connect the dots.
Michelle Lieu: Um, so again, when everything feels so overwhelming, you don't know where to start to start to solution and brainstorm and fix things. Just start writing and it'll eventually come out. [00:53:00] 
AUDIENCE: Tricia. 
Trisha Dang: I think for us, again, with competing priorities, it's really hard to think about the criteria, which actually can help you prioritize across the department.
Trisha Dang: And we struggle with that all the time at va. We still struggle with it today. Everybody's, everything is important. Everybody's important. Again, I think again, if we focus on the mission and that things we want to accomplish, and we corral that, whether we are integrated teams or separate teams, we focus on the same thing together.
Trisha Dang: We get much further. And I think it starts with you don't have to solve the world problem, but you start somewhere. And that's really important for us as we think about innovations and you technologies, starting somewhere is really important. Test it out, see if that works right. Um, and making sure again, that that resonates with your customers.
Trisha Dang: They want to respond to that. They will respond to it, and it accomplishes what they wanna do. Great. 
AUDIENCE: Thank you, Steve. 
Steve Boberski: Um, what I would say, I guess is, you know, everybody, you know, ai, it's here, it's not coming, right? But so, so how do you do it? Um, everybody talks about a proof [00:54:00] of concept or a pilot and how do you do it, but we still see a lot of people step out there without measurable success criteria for their pilot, right?
Steve Boberski: So, um, I like to talk, I stole a phrase from a panelist I did a couple years ago. It's called Catastrophic Success. You wanna avoid catastrophic success, okay? Which is, I do a pilot, it's great. You get the outcomes you want, it's measurable, and everybody gets a hold of it and says, wow, we start dropping this everywhere, and you lose complete control of the deployment.
Steve Boberski: Um, and now you're spending money that you don't, you're not gonna see the benefit too, right? So, um, rarely does the government move too fast. Okay? This is true, but it can move too fast and you can miss, you could literally miss the boat, right? So, um, it's important to just make sure that you, you pick, pick a place to start and break it down completely.
Steve Boberski: Flip over the rocks and, and, you know. We're here to help. At Genesis, all of the, all of the part technology partners in this room are here to help. That's what, that's why we do the gov. Government's different. Right. Um, when, if you talk to, uh, A CEO at a, the corporate environment and why do they want agent agents?
Steve Boberski: Well, they wanna start letting agents go and the, and the government, that's not [00:55:00] necessarily the case. We wanna augment the agent experience and maybe deal with surges and handle turnover. And we wanna reduce the burden on the agent. Thank God we, ag agentic is coming and we can start automating process.
Steve Boberski: It's a totally different battle. We're fighting in the public sector and we have some of the same concerns, especially when it comes to the customer treasury, but how we handle it and how we address it's different. So, um, the encouragement is really just take the time, break it down, and just, you know, pick any place to start, but document everything you could possibly think of and then ask more questions.
AUDIENCE: Great. Thank you so much. Um, now we have a few minutes left for any questions from the audience, so if you would like, please raise your hand. 
Speaker 5: I'm coming that way. 
Steve Boberski: The answer is 12 
AUDIENCE: ice cream. Ice cream. Yeah. Ice cream. Six, seven. For anybody that has kids. Seven. Sorry. 
Steve Boberski: I have to tell six, seven, Jo. I was, I was sitting working at a Chick-fil-A a couple weeks ago on a Sunday morning.
Steve Boberski: I was just doing some email waiting [00:56:00] to get out and, and there was a, there was a group of seniors playing bingo, and it was oh, 67, and every single one of 'em said six, seven, the entire group. So if it's penetrated at that level, I'm just, you know, that, that, that will surely put an end to it right at that point.
Steve Boberski: But, but that, oh, 67. Six seven. The whole, the whole group. I just stunning. 
AUDIENCE: Go ahead. 
Speaker 6: That was a great story. Uh, hi. Jen Dockerty, PCI, federal. Um, Ms. D, you mentioned that you include various feedback mechanisms in the various channels, and as an AVID online shopper, I get to see a lot of the. The survey at the end that says, how was your experience today?
Speaker 6: I would be interested to know what other feedback mechanisms that you include a really question for all of you. Thank you. 
Trisha Dang: Sure. So again, it depends on our channels. Not only channels, many of our call centers have post-call surveys, right? Would you like to stay on the phone to give us feedback, which drives improvements at the individual level?
Trisha Dang: And then at the systematic level, if [00:57:00] there's any challenges. And also we gather good things that happen are happening that we wanna perpetuate. Uh, same thing with the online channels. You have the same mechanism to provide us feedback, but in addition to that, that's in interaction. We're measuring both interactions.
Trisha Dang: We also measure transactions, right? You've actually completed your healthcare appointment with your provider. At the end of that, we actually asked you how did things go. So we can actually see through that journey what are some of the challenges you may have, and what were the bright spots this fall. Um, in addition, VA also looks at what you know for.
Trisha Dang: Again, critical to what we think about is since we're a federal agency, do our customers trust us, especially our veteran populations, their family members and caregivers. So on a quarterly basis, we also measure trust, you know, against where, you know, again, at the transactional level, the interaction level, and then at the, how do you truly feel about va?
Trisha Dang: What's your holistic experience with VA so far 
Steve Boberski: and, and I would say, and, and as much as we're not the only ones that do this, we feel we do it well. When you talk [00:58:00] about quality contact centers, do something called quality analysis and quality. Right. Quality management, right? And that usually includes sampling and listening to recordings over and over again with, with the intelligence and analytics are there today, you can derive intent and sentiment from the recording without having to do the survey, right?
Steve Boberski: So, you know, if they were happy, um, long before you've asked them if they're happy, you usually have that in the middle of the transcript. Like, Hey, change your tone. They're unhappy, right? So you could do all of those things right in real time, which is important. But then when you wanna analyze a campaign or just a group of calls or agent performance, it doesn't matter.
Steve Boberski: Now you can search for keywords and phrases automatically, and it'll po, it'll just take you right to that dialogue, and you can listen to it yourself if you want, but set up making them do a survey and surveys are still valuable. There's no question, but you have all the data you need inside that call.
Steve Boberski: If you actually have the transcript, and if you've gathered it and listened, you could drive a tent sentiment. Are they happy? What were they trying to do? Did the agent answer all the questions? Everything from. You know, uh, compliance, did they say everything they're supposed to say from a training perspective and then [00:59:00] customer satisfaction.
Steve Boberski: You can get all of that from the actual analysis you can do on the, on the transactions you have. 
Trisha Dang: I would also add that, you know, part of the process that VO has also is also, again, when we talk about human centered design, we talk about actually talking to our customers before we even start to build a capability.
Trisha Dang: That's actually really key in our process. Making sure we are having one-on-one interviews with our customers, making sure they're representative of our population, having panels, and then actually as we roll out new capabilities, there's also an engagement model of that, of just not surveys, but also coming on site to facility as we're rolling out new technology to get feedback on site.
Trisha Dang: Right? So multiple ways in which we make sure across different channels, we're hearing those feedbacks, we're evaluating them for like impact and volume, and then using that to drive our improvements. Great. 
AUDIENCE: Thank you. 
Speaker 5: Be awesome right here. 
AUDIENCE: Any other questions? 
Steve Boberski: Okay, we have some up front.[01:00:00] 
AUDIENCE: She's making her way there. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Thank you. Hi, I am Mary Falls Staley. I am with Community cx. Uh, we're a public benefit corporation, so one of the things that we work with when we work with state government is how they incorporate external stakeholders in the pro in their service design, delivery, um, process. And really recognizing that the community, you know, that there are different communities and pockets of different community members that require different services, and so really leveraging the external exper expertise from those stakeholders.
Speaker 5: I'm just wondering if you can talk a little bit about how, if or how you engage some of those sort of expert or other stakeholder groups as you think about designing service delivery and modernization. 
Michelle Lieu: I can jump in. Um, for us at Social Security, we have, um, good partnerships with, with. Those who do business with Social Security.
Michelle Lieu: [01:01:00] So for instance, when we were redesigning the ssa.gov webpage, the homepage and like subsequent task pages back in 2021, we reached out to appointed representatives. So attorneys, um, those who were paid attorneys versus non-paid attorneys just to figure out, well, what are you going to our website for?
Michelle Lieu: Right? And, and what are you looking for specifically From there, it can help kind of guide which way your design would go. Um, I think ultimately we ended up splitting between the customer. So the public had one specific webpage that they can, and then appointed reps had very specific things that they would want to do, which was really different from the specific public that we actually served.
Michelle Lieu: Um, but I think those partnerships are so important when it comes to, um, the type of government service that you provide. I mean, social Security touches the lives of all, like everyone, and so being able to incorporate some of their feedback into the design process is so critical. 
Trisha Dang: I would also add at, at [01:02:00] va there are many individual external stakeholders that we've gotta, you know, think of, I mean, we've gotta think of the Hill.
Trisha Dang: We've gotta think of veteran service organizations who are actually very key in working with veterans who need assistance to get through our processes. Um, if you're looking at education, there are schools that are actually our customers. The schools call us to make sure they can certify things, right?
Trisha Dang: When we're looking at home loans, we're working with banks. So again, the, the breadth of stakeholders at VA externally is, is wide. And I think it depends on like which particular capability we're looking at, which external stakeholders those are and how it might work with them. States, the great example actually, states have more benefits for veterans than VA does.
Trisha Dang: And again, making sure that as we're looking at things locally, we're also. Hearing those voices, but working to ensure that we're also referring those services as well for our veteran populations. I think again, for if you think about the veteran population, community is really core. Most veterans are all about what they hear from their buddies, right?
Trisha Dang: [01:03:00] It's not what VA tells them, but it's like, what was your experience when you tried to do this? Who helped you? You know? So again, making sure we're entrenched in that we actually, within the Veterans Experience Office, also have a partnership work effort. Veterans love to game. So yes, we've had partnerships with gaming companies who might again, serve our veteran populations and understanding what are those key things they might do, are those opportunities to also in and, um, provide veteran services through those channels.
Trisha Dang: So there's a breadth of that, and I think we focus on those depending on the problem we're trying to solve. 
Steve Boberski: And, and for us it's, uh, it's as the industry side, it's more enablement for us, right? So when, when we have one large agency trying to solve our problem and we happen to have solved that, or they're both tagged at the same time, it's a lot easier to get them together in inside the federal network and say, share your experience.
Steve Boberski: And they're always willing to share, uh, the, a's been a great partner for us, right? So there is, there's always opportunity to share the experience with another agency, but also as a large contact center company. Uh, we have huge enterprise business that happens to focus on healthcare and [01:04:00] financial. When you see healthcare challenges, whether it's federal or private sector, there's, you know, you've got redaction you got P-H-I-P-I-I, those kind of challenges.
Steve Boberski: How are we handling and how are we, how are you doing it? Then you can start sharing what the industry's doing across the board. And I'll tell you, um, your, your brothers and sisters in business, uh, on the enterprise side are very interested in what the government's doing because you always do it securely first, and, and that's a priority for them as well.
Steve Boberski: So oftentimes we, we get to take our government customers doing this, you might wanna think about that. So, um, it's, it's fun to be on the other side of that as well. 
Trisha Dang: I would say it's the other way around as well. We do a lot of benchmarking and market research with our commercial, you know, entities who provide great service.
Trisha Dang: We make sure that we're actually meeting with the Kaisers or the Mayo Clinics when we're thinking about healthcare, what they've done well, what they've learned, and we incorporate a lot of that into our processes as we're starting new endeavors. 
AUDIENCE: Great. Well, we are at time, so please join me in thanking, um, our panelists for sharing their insights and [01:05:00] expertise.