Multichannel Management in the Public Sector - A Literature Review

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How to Succeed with Multichannel Management::A Case Study of Cross-Organizational Collaboration Surrounding a Mandatory Self-Service Application for Danish Single Parents

Citizens' use of e-government channels is considered key to achieving savings from the digitization of the public sector. Channel choice studies have found that citizens use multiple channels in a service encounter and e-government channels supplement, rather than replace traditional channels. This interplay between traditional and e-government channels remains to be explained. There is also a lack of empirical knowledge of how government organizations can apply findings from user studies and migrate citizens online while simultaneously reducing traffic through traditional channels. Therefore the authors present a detailed longitudinal case study of how public authorities collaborated to create a multichannel strategy for a mandatory online self-service application for single parents. After the strategy was carried out there was an increase in the use of the application and a substantial reduction in calls. The authors offer contributions to the channel choice literature and recommendations on multichannel management to practitioners.</p

Channel Choice: A Literature Review

Part 1: FoundationsInternational audienceThe channel choice branch of e-government studies citizens’ and businesses’ choice of channels for interacting with government, and how government organizations can integrate channels and migrate users towards the most cost-efficient channels. In spite of the valuable contributions offered no systematic overview exist of channel choice. We present a literature review of channel choice studies in government to citizen context identifying authors, countries, methods, concepts, units of analysis, and theories, and offer suggestions for future studies

Understanding Citizen Actions in Public Encounters:Towards a Multi-Channel Process Model

This paper presents ongoing research that is part of a larger engaged research project which aims to investigate what public services are suitable for digitalization. The aim of our paper is twofold. First, we explore and describe citizens' core actions in their interaction with public organizations during application for public benefits. We develop a generic process model for how this interaction can be captured empirically. The model is based on a review of previous studies from e.g., channel choice, multi-channel management, and service management, and provides a holistic view of the core actions in public service delivery as seen from the perspective of the citizen. Second, we add a channel behavior dimension to this model to create a service blueprint template that can be used to capture and analyze citizens' multichannel behavior related to benefit application. Hereby we contribute to the digital government field with a research methodology for investigation of citizens' continuous channel behavior during public service encounters

Integrated and seamless?:Single Parents’ Experiences of Cross-Organizational Interaction

The lack of integration of public organizations and services is a recurring challenge for scholars, policymakers, and citizens. Within the e-government field, scholars have presented web-stage models, which predict that digitization will lead to a fully integrated public sector and seamless user journeys for citizens. Although these models have not delivered on their promises, scholars and policymakers still regard digitization as a means to integrate the public sector, achieve efficiency gains, and improve service quality. We argue that the web-stage models overlook barriers to integration, as they are mostly conceptual, and primarily focus on the potential of technology, rather than its actual implementation and use. Moreover, the models occur on the organizational level of analysis and ignore citizens and their actual experiences. Therefore, we present an empirical study of how citizens experience crossorganizational interaction during benefit application following a family break-up or divorce. Through observations, contextual interviews, focus group discussions and workshops we identify seven challenges citizens experience. These challenges make citizens aware that they are interacting with different organizations and break their experience of an integrated public sector. Further, the challenges cause citizens to turn from the digital channels towards traditional channels to complete their interaction. Thus, the lack of integration challenge both citizens’ satisfaction and efficiency gains from public sector digitalization