This article was written by Harshitha Rajashekara, project manager in Sydney, New South Wales government, Australia. This article was selected as one of the finalists in Apolitical’s citizen engagement writing competition.

Citizen or customer engagement has become a core part of almost every organisation. Organisations are rewriting their values, mission and vision in order to be aligned with their customers/citizens.

This is also true when it comes to the public sector, and it is a fact that Government is trying to adopt the private-sector model when it comes to serving customers. And it’s easy to understand why: citizen or customer engagement is vital to running both a successful country and a lucrative business.

In my previous Government organisation (ServiceNSW, Sydney, Australia), we had a dedicated CX (Customer Experience) team working continuously with the customers. Being part of that entire CX journey and process for several years, I have seen products undergo drastic changes after incorporating customer/citizen feedback.

In my experience, some of the most important words in citizen engagement are empathy, attachment, volume, process and leadership. Below I describe my understanding of these concepts and what they mean for citizen engagement.

Process

Depending on the type of problem you are trying to solve, it can be a complex and tedious task to identify the primary citizens/customers that you need to talk to.

It becomes even more tricky in the public sector, where the goal is to keep all citizens  — a pretty diverse group of people — happy. Identifying the target group to interact or engage with in order to solve a particular problem may end up disappointing other groups of citizens. This is where a huge part of the communication skills come in during the engagement process.

Leadership

Government is run by politicians and their reputation is low in citizen's eyes. This doesn't mean that citizens are going to expect less from their government. Perhaps surprisingly, citizen's expectations are always high irrespective of their political leaders.

The recent history of failed political leaders has created a leak in the system of trust. When it comes to certain problems and issues, it is futile to engage the citizens who don't trust the government as there will be no genuine dialogue between the two parties.

Volume

The most difficult part of citizen engagement is the volume. Most private organisations have their own target audience for whom they want to solve a specific problem or improve a service.

Having empathetic conversations will help to increase the quality of engagement

In the case of government, every citizen is a customer and has diverse needs. In order to maintain this massive database, the government needs to have efficient systems and processes to maintain, access and use the data for effective engagement. It is also proven that quality will fall down with the increase in the volume. So, engagement section will become a tough task because of the large volumes.

Environment

Citizen engagement differs from country to country, meaning it depends on whether it is a developing, developed or underdeveloped country. It is the hardest in the developed countries. If I would have not done a deep dive in the CX world for a couple of years, I would have thought that developing and low-income countries would have the biggest issues with citizen engagement.

After going through multiple touchpoints and research phases with customers across the world, I realised that it is actually more difficult to engage citizens in a developed country. Developed countries are often quite diverse and citizens all have different, assorted needs.

For example, Sydney has a plethora of cultures, gender, age and belief in just a single small suburb. Each one of them has a different set of values and the way they engage with external entities. Hence, developed countries need a unique strategy in order to achieve effective citizen engagement.

Attachment

From the years of doing customer research and engagement work in both the private and public sectors, I have observed one crucial aspect that separates the two. Citizens have a sense of emotional expectations from the government. I would like to define it as a mother and a child bond.

there is no cookie-cutter method or a standard recipe for citizen engagement

Though the citizens understand the broken and untrustworthy system, they still believe that the government is accountable to fix their problems. This expectation and dependency on the government is increasing day by day.

Partnership

Citizen engagement is often seen as an effort that only the government should make. This is such a wrong assumption.

Engagement is a combined effort of both citizens and the government. It is the responsibility of the government to convey the importance of collaboration to the citizens, in order for the two sides to have quality dialogues. Government needs to have technology, systems and processes in place, so that citizens feel easy to access government.

Support

Citizen engagement is not only just a way of reaching citizens in order to identify the best way to spend the paid tax amount.

It is about collaboration, empathy, active listening and deeper understanding of their needs which are most of the time unsaid and unarticulated. It takes a deep sense of empathy and courage (with confidence) to have those difficult conversations with citizens and to understand the actual feelings behind the words.

Empathy

Having empathetic conversations will help to increase the quality of engagement. The simple reason being that citizens feel more confident to share information with an empathic listener.

Empathy can help both build and rebuild trust. Also, building trust is not a one-time task, rather it is a continuous and conscious process.

Citizens can be asked to step up and to share some of the responsibilities in this type of environment. The government should always need to think of creative and fun ways to engage citizens using technology. Engagement is required from all people, and should represent a diversity of gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, background, culture, etc. .

In conclusion, there is no cookie-cutter method or a standard recipe for citizen engagement. But some common elements stand out. Building and maintaining trust is a crucial and continuous aspect of engagement. Citizen engagement is a collaborative effort, often initiated and lead by the government. The government has to build an efficient process in order to maintain large volumes of data/conversations.

Public servants need to have a skill of empathy in order to become an effective problem solver. — Harshitha Rajashekara

(Picture credit: Unsplash)