In Leadership in Customer Service: Delivering on the Promise, Accenture’s eighth and most far-reaching report to date, they find governments at an important crossroad.

“Governments have unintentionally widened the gap between service provision and citizen value. Technology advances in recent years have led governments to focus primarily on the front end of service, fostering expectations of an entirely new customer experience. Governments succeeded in representing existing services across multiple channels. However, their success was just the first step of true citizen-centricity. What governments still have not done is make the infrastructural and cultural changes necessary to fully realise their vision. Citizens used these newly available channels expecting consistent levels of service quality. Instead, the back-end infrastructure was inadequate, resulting in a poor customer experience and lower satisfaction.