What You Can Learn from My Frustratingly Time-Consuming eGovernment Experience

I was surprised to find a summons from the court in my mailbox some time ago.??A case had been filed by the Capital Governorate against one of my old companies, which has been inactive since 2016!

I called a lawyer I often deal with and asked him to look into the matter.??When I spoke to him this morning he told me that he could only do so if I gave him a separate Power of Attorney for this company.??The other option, he explained, was to go to the Bahrain government e-portal and look up the case myself.??It seems the Ministry of Justice has now added its services to the portal.??All I had to do was visit Bahrain.bh and enter the case number.

If this sounds too good to be true, of course it is.??I went to the portal and found the MoJ link relatively easily, but the form for the case number just did not work.??Try as I might it would not work.

I then decided to call the customer service hotline.??The call was answered relatively quickly but I was told I would have to call the MoJ directly to figure out what the issue was.??The lady gave me a number and I called it.

No one answered.

Having had to deal with the government for almost two decades now, I knew that getting the information I wanted would be more like a prolonged war than a quick battle.??In my mind I set the goal of calling them five times a day, so I called again.

No one answered.

I waited another half an hour or so and called again (filling the time with other work matters).

Someone answered!?

The person on the other end was a kind gentleman who said, “oh, this matter is with the civil cases department, please call them on this number”, and he gave me another number.

And so the cycle continued… I gave myself another five tries.

Good news!??The call was picked up on the second attempt!??This time a friendly lady explained that the matter was with the court in the Capital Governorate.??She said, “let me give you their numbers.”??Note she said?numbers?(plural).??She then gave me seven different telephone numbers!

Wow!??That would mean 35 calls if I were to try each five times!

By then a couple of hours had passed and I still could not even find out why the case had been raised against me.??I called the first number.

No one answered.

I waited a bit and then decided to call the same number again.??If no one picked up I would go through all the numbers, trying each number once.

Thankfully someone picked up on the second attempt.??A kind lady listened while I explained my situation for the third time.??She asked me for the case number, and it turns out she was the right person to speak to!??YES!

She said she could email me the information if I wanted.??Perfect, I thought.??She took my email address and said that the information would be sent shortly.

I never received anything.?

The story went on like this for quite a while, but what’s interesting about this is that Bahrain is supposed to be relatively advanced when it comes to its e-government services.??Our tiny Kingdom is ranked 26th?in the world in the UN e-Government Readiness report, higher than Brazil (44th), Cyprus (36th) and Greece (35th). (In case you’re curious the Number One country, not surprisingly, is Denmark).

As someone who runs a strategy and innovation consultancy, I know how difficult digital transformation is.??It’s a mammoth task, so reaching 26th?place in the world is no joke.

“So, what does this have to do with me?” you might ask.??A lot.

It’s not just governments who have ridiculous loops for their customers.??Some private sector companies are even worse than governments.??Some examples that come to mind are banks, insurance companies (financial institutions in general) and airlines.

Many small businesses are not much better.??Here are three things you can do to make sure you never end up being a negative example in one of my articles:

1.??????Distinguish between customer service and customer experience:

Notice how the people I spoke to were very friendly.??Not one of them was rude or disrespectful.??So, the short-term customer “service” was acceptable, but the overall experience was poor.??As a citizen I should have been able to log into the portal and get what I needed.??Make sure you design your entire customer experience from first contact to last to be useful, beneficial, and positively memorable.??Aim to make the entire process delightful.

2.??????Empower your team:

What’s the point of calling a hotline when the person answering the phone is not empowered to help you???Make sure that those answering the phone are well trained and empowered to help.

3.?????Pay attention to the details:

You’ll hear many high-level government officials here in Bahrain talk with pride about the government e-portal, but I would bet you you’re last Post-it note that none of them have used it.??They are concerned with the high-level decisions, as it should be, but someone needs to pay attention to the details to make sure the service actually works like it’s supposed to.??When it comes to your business, dig deeper and get involved in the details to make sure what is supposed to happen actually happens.

As for the court case, I’m happy to report that it was settled amicably without going to court.??The core of the issue was a lack of communication between government departments, and with me.?

Now go improve your customer experience process.?