Operationalizing CX for the U.S. Coast Guard
A CASE STUDY
My roles
Consultant
The CX executive order (Executive Order 14058 Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government) has had a powerful effect on federal agencies since it was signed in 2021. Each DHS component has followed their own path to compliance and as a result, DHS headquarters’ role in their maturity has been varied.
When an integrated product team the U.S. Coast Guard set up to improve customer experiences struggled, the team’s leadership asked the Customer Experience Directorate for help.
Solution: Expand the human-centered design capabilities of team members with hands-on human-centered design work
Few on the Coast Guard’s team of “CX ambassadors” had been exposed to customer experience work and they came from widely different backgrounds. The Coast Guard’s original ask was for simple training to introduce a common vocabulary, but I convinced them that a more aggressive approach was necessary.
The high-level project plan
I facilitated a series of discussions where we developed a three-part process with my team of CX professionals to help the Coast Guard team expand its capabilities:
In a facilitated workshop, collaborate with the Coast Guard team to map the organization’s capabilities, teaching them how to apply DHS’s CX maturity model. Expand their existing plans for expanding CX capabilities based on the new information.
Identify the gap between what the team needs to accomplish and their individual ability to accomplish it. Co-design a curriculum to fill that gap.
Level up each team members’ skills.
Impact
Rather than taking a top-down, system-centric approach to this challenge, we looked at it from the perspective of the new CX ambassadors. In other words, we used human-centered design activities to address the expansion of each team member’s human-centered design skills. The approach gave the team’s leadership a new way of looking at their challenges.
When circumstances shifted radically during the first 100 days of the new administration, the Coast Guard had to adjust both its strategies and tactics for improving customer experiences. We weren’t able to implement the original plan, but it served as a foundation for the plans that followed.