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Why smartphone apps aren't always the answer

It's happened for years, it happens in the private as well as the public sector and because of the move to deliver services via digital it's happening more and more.

What is it? Organisations purchasing applications and more lately smartphone apps as a quick fix, rather than a joined-up, strategic move for delivering services online.

I'm going to use fault reporting apps as an example. The type of thing you can use to tell councils about potholes, graffiti, and so on. There's a number of these around now all performing much the same task, many being sold in part as becoming really useful to people when more councils purchase them.

Whilst it seems that councils are doing right in offering more services digitally there's two main problems with this approach:


1) If you travel through the areas different councils look after, then you'll need to install apps for each location. 

There's no joined up approach to the way councils procure stuff like this, so for example if you live in Wiltshire but work in Reading and the three councils that cover the area of your journey have all bought separate apps (they haven't, by the way), then you'll need to install these three separate apps on your phone and remember to use the right one depending on where you are.

This is bound to create a negative view of digital services delivered by councils, when those that purchased them thought they were doing the opposite.


2) They're often not integrated with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

In some cases all these apps do is send an email. It's a better formatted email, containing geo-data and a sometimes a better quality of information, but it's still an email someone needs to manually type into a CRM. 

Whilst it can make it a easier for the customer, it's actually not delivering any time or efficiency savings for the organisations who purchase them and if you're receiving more reports because you've made it easier for residents to do so, it could actually cost you more.


So that's a lot of moaning about what happens now, but how could it be improved?

Councils should be looking to improve the foundation on which these digital services are built. In the case of the fault reporting app, it's creating something like an Open 311 Service and integrating this with a their CRM. 

Obviously this is a lot more difficult than buying an off the shelf app, it's not a quick win, but providing services like this digitally shouldn't be just a box ticking exercise, councils should be thinking about how residents might actually use them.

Creating a service built to a worldwide standard like Open 311 means any app worth its salt will provide data in a format you can then plug into your CRM and create new cases automatically.  

This means that it doesn't matter which app the customer chooses to use, they can still report faults to you, and it also removes the need for manually entering the data.

When planning for new digital services, providing firm foundations will not only improve customer experience, but help to create efficiency savings for your organisation.

I'm interested to get other's views on this and you find me on Twitter @PhilRumens to discuss it.


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