UX Research Fellowship - The City of Lansing

UX Research - Problem Identification - Individual

The Goal

Michigan's capital city had identified that many citizens were being led on a wild goose chase when they called the city. Citizens were unsure of whom they should contact when they needed help, and employees at the city were frustrated by erroneous calls. The city had no way of tracking who was calling and where they were being transferred to. Calls come in, calls are transferred, and calls are addressed with no way of knowing the real journey a caller is experiencing. Lansing decided investing in some sort of Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) software would be useful but were hesitant to spend the money without a strong understanding of their actual situation. As a Citizen Interaction Design (CID) Fellow, I was tasked with figuring out what the actual caller journey looks like and to find the most common threads of citizen routing. In doing so I would be able to identify the root causes of confusion for both citizens and employees and the departments that would be the major stakeholders in developing a long term customer service solution.

The Process

Immersion - Over nine weeks, I set out to immerse myself in the culture and processes at the City of Lansing. Understanding the initiatives and goals of the administration would help me recognize the context in which a long term solution would need to fit in order to align with the direction of the city. This immersion came in the form of sitting in on dozens of meetings, connecting with employees, assisting with different technology and data-based projects, and participating in the events and programs the city organizes. 

​Interviews - Over the course of my fellowship, I interviewed 20 City of Lansing Employees across seven different city departments. These departments included the Lansing Police Department, the Lansing Fire Department, Economic Development & Planning, Public Service, Human Relations & Community Services, Neighborhoods & Citizen Engagement, and Parks & Recreation. The subjects of these interviews varied from department directors, middle-level management, and front-line staff. I developed an interview protocol that focused on two main points. First, on gaining knowledge of the protocols, strategies, and tools used by departments and employees to reroute and track citizen calls and service requests. Second, gathering from employees the most common complaints they hear from citizens that are not relevant to their department and where these complaints should actually be handled. After conducting these interviews, I analyzed the responses to determine the most common department's employees identified as having to reroute to, and compared strategies, protocols, and tools that employees use in each department.

​Comparative Analysis - I conducted comparative research into how other cities, both larger and of similar size to Lansing, had addressed similar issues. The City of Lansing is currently undertaking different initiatives to promote data governance and use data to their advantage. While doing this research I wanted to focus on the type of data other cities were collecting in this area and how they were using this data to inform decisions around the systems used to connect citizens with services. I then compared these cities’ systems to Lansing’s, taking into account everything from phone services to website design.

The Result

I introduced two main findings to the City of Lansing that needed to be considered as they moved forward with finding a customer service solution. The first was my understanding of the most common call transfer routes. Every department I interviewed identified that they transferred to either the Code Compliance division or the Operations & Maintenance division most often. These two divisions then identified each other as the place they need to transfer citizens the most. These divisions also agreed there is a tremendous amount of grey area between the two. Knowing what task should be delegated to whom can be difficult for even the employees working within these divisions, let alone a citizen calling with no understanding of the organizational structure of the city. I proposed that it is vital for Code Compliance and Operations & Maintenance to be involved in the future discussions of solution ideation as they are doing the heavy lifting of customer service at the city.

The second key finding was the city had the opportunity to create a cohesive digital strategy across different communication channels.  The city had three main tools citizens could use to be connected to the solutions of their concerns: the city's website, the city's service request app (Lansing Connect), and traditional phone calls. However, these tools were acting as individual platforms rather than three pieces of a larger system.

I proposed the city design these tools in a way that is informed by the other.  By adopting a website with a template that puts the issues that citizens are most likely coming to the website to solve, and the different ways to solve them (Lansing Connect, phone, or in-person), as the focal point, Lansing can leverage different communication channels that citizens may not be aware of. In the short term, the design of the website can be informed by data collected by Lansing Connect. If the city begins to collect data from a CRM this data can also be incorporated to inform which issues are presented on the website. Lansing has an amazing opportunity to make customer service and website design decisions at the same time. Thinking about the website, Lansing Connect, and phone communication as pieces of the same system rather than individual platforms will be key in creating a website and customer service solution specifically for citizen needs.