Guiding Integrated Service Delivery: Synthesizing and Embedding Principles Using Role‑Playing Games

Abstract

Public agencies around the world are increasingly supplementing their service delivery channels with online services and continue to establish several policies and rules for improving service delivery. Such policies and rules are however based on customer oriented management paradigms without any consideration of complex customer interaction processes and staff experiences. Consequently, these policies and rules are deemed unrealistic and are often not picked up by employees. This paper reports on the synthesis of service delivery principles by employing a participative role playing game approach at a public agency. Service principles can be used to guide the design, implementation and execution of integrated service delivery. A role playing game refers to a research approach in which employees play a certain role and follow a script to simulate a range of customer interactions. Recognizing that customer experience is formed across several moments of contact with the agency through multiple channels, the game proved to be a useful instrument for both synthesizing principles and gaining bottom up commitment for embedding the principles within the public agency. We found that after the game, the employees that helped to synthesize the set of eight principles have also become active ambassadors for the principles within their respective departments.