Customer experience modernization sounds straightforward, until agencies try to execute it

Guest:	John Boerstler
Title:	General manager for U.S. federal government at Granicus
Summary:	Federal leaders are under growing pressure to improve how the public experiences government, even as they manage compliance, security and aging systems. We'll explore where agencies are encountering the most friction and what’s helping them move from intent to execution.

The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton provides expert insights on current events in the federal community. Read more interviews to keep up with daily news and analysis that affect the federal workforce. Reach out to Terry and the Federal Drive producers with feedback and story ideas at FederalDrive@federalnewsnetwork.com.

Interview transcript

Terry Gerton I want to talk a little bit about how Granicus is reorganizing its leadership. You’re putting more focus on federal agencies at a time when a lot of technology promises are colliding with real execution limits. From what you’re seeing, what’s driving agencies to demand tighter alignment between their technology partners and their mission outcomes?

John Boerstler Well, it’s more important now than it ever has been. I think with lots of discussion around artificial intelligence and how we use that to better serve Americans is critical right now, and Granicus, in particular, the Federal Experience Cloud that we’re announcing here and launching here, I think brings a lot of what we do already in the federal government from a software perspective, communications, secure, direct communications, the way the agencies get that message to the citizens they serve as quickly and easily as possible and enroll them in the programs that they’re eligible for. As a former customer of Granicus, when I was at the Department of Veterans Affairs, we were able to really reach millions of unenrolled veterans and get them connected to health care and benefits using the outbound SMS and email and dashboarding tools that we now have rolled into our federal experience cloud. So, I think it’s an important time to be in this government technology business because we’re able to shape what happens next and, you know, Granicus is not just in the federal government. We serve state and local, but we’re purpose built for government as we like to say. So 7,000 customers across the United States. And so we see billions of insights and we want to use all that data to really help inform the next step and to build these models of the future.

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Terry Gerton When you think about all of that data, a lot of vendors talk about improving outcomes, but for agencies that can often mean fewer complaints, faster process times, clearer information for the public. When you’re talking to federal leaders now, how are they defining success for these of customer or citizen outreach programs.

John Boerstler I think driving more to digital services so that you can cut down the wait times on call centers so that you can reduce the number of folks having to drive multiple hours to get services in a physical location is absolutely important. Some of the work that we’re doing for some of the high impact service providers like Social Security Administration, for example, is really hitting the mark in terms of converting over 100 million Americans into MySSA.gov. And the new digital experience that that has provided and cutting down paper delivery of these statements and that information that is so critical on, how many quarters have I paid into, so that I can retire in security, right? So I do think that there’s so much that we are doing currently at every cabinet level agency, but there’s much more that we should be doing and could be doing, especially with the launch of our Federal Experience Cloud, which really brings together our software, all of those data insights and the Granicus Experience Group services that have been so successful for our federal customers in the past.

Terry Gerton When you talk about that service delivery, a lot of agencies are finding that it’s intersecting with cybersecurity and accessibility and compliance, and they don’t have as much staff as they used to deliver these kinds of programs. Where do you see agencies struggle the most to coordinate all of those demands, even when they really, really want to get it right?

John Boerstler I think the resourcing is in helping leadership understand and make decisions based on the data that they have, particularly around human resources and how much they should be investing, we can help inform that. We have a really important tool called the Government Experience Insights Dashboard where — and I wish we would have had this when I was in service as we talked about in our former positions earlier, it’s really important to be able to see all of the picture so I can pull operational metrics, I can pull experience data, I can pull engagement data to really help inform where I should be investing those critical taxpayer dollars to drive more digital experiences and cut down on paper costs as I mentioned earlier. And hopefully that can reduce the number of hours spent by federal employees and other contractors.

Terry Gerton John, you talked about 100 million people migrating to MySSA, but there is still a segment of the American population that is not digital and does not engage with the federal government in a digital way. How can agencies make sure that as they’re moving the majority of people to a digital experience they still have the capacity to reach those who aren’t online?

John Boerstler Absolutely. This is something that, you know, as a former government official, I dealt with and considered often daily, right? And it’s how do we design for all? And I think that’s so critical because it’s really about, even if they do have access, it’s about preference too, and we have to respect that. So because it is our obligation to deliver this information to our constituents, we want to do the best we can to help advise our agency partners and show them that if we can design an alternative way to reach these individuals, whether they’re highly rural, or their preferences are different or they’re just not connected, then we can certainly do that through a lot of our Granicus Experience Group persona development and journey mapping and the human-centered design elements and make those recommendations in concert with the digital first approach where we’re sending text messages. We’re able to communicate one to one or one to many with our platform, sending email newsletters. All of this can be coordinated in that multi-channel or even omnichannel environment.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with John Boerstler. He’s general manager of U.S. Federal government at Granicus. John, any time I talk to somebody about improving government technology, AI has to come up. So here it is: it’s increasingly part of how agencies are thinking about service delivery and internal operations. From your perspective, where are agencies most cautious about using AI right now? And what questions are they asking before they’re willing to scale these AI tools?

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John Boerstler I think a lot of agencies are really trying to determine how AI ready they really are. And every agency has a different need or a different use case to deploy different models. And what we’re seeing is like, yes, there’s an appetite. And there’s certainly an interest. And there is a push, I think, not only from the private sector, but the constituents that we directly serve to ensure that we’re developing these tools. So how do we kind of design for that? And how do we keep that in mind, given that every agency is so different in the way that they deliver services and understand that data? I think that’s really what puts Granicus at a significant advantage, and especially with the launch of our Federal Experience Cloud. We have these billions of insights that we’ve collected, and we’ve served hundreds of millions of Americans across state, local, and federal government to be able to then train these agents and train these models to then deliver these services and experiences much faster, more effective, and all the while saving the agency money, hopefully. So I do think that many agencies are looking at it from that perspective of, can this drive better service delivery while at the same time saving government personnel hours and financial resources that are appropriated by Congress? And they, of course, need to be spent very prudently on behalf of the American people. So, we can help advise that by pulling down that data into our, as I mentioned earlier, our GXI or Government Experience Insights dashboard to say, well, here’s the full picture. Here’s how people are engaging. Here’s how people aren’t engaging. Here’s where AI can play a role because we’re using AI to inform that dashboard itself. So there’s really a great nexus there.

Terry Gerton One of the ways to move this process forward is leveraging the expertise of both the folks in government and the private sector. You’ve been on both sides of the equation. From your perspective now in practical terms, what does a productive public-private partnership look like while agencies are trying to modernize their systems and meet their near-term mission demands?

John Boerstler I think it’s critical for us to work in tandem. I relied on a lot of advice, not only from my direct government employees when I was in service at the Department of Veterans Affairs, of course, but also the vendors that we worked with that were learning about new tools and new ways to deliver services faster, more effectively, more cost-effectively especially, with either whether they’re commercial customers on the outside or state and local governments where they were testing and incubating new ideas and then bringing that into a FedRAMP secure environment, like Granicus delivers with our Federal Experience Cloud. So coming on this side of the fence, so to speak, given my government [experience], I think that does aptly prepare me to help our partners at agencies make these strategic level decisions by gathering that data and having sat in the seat myself and faced a lot of the pressures that are on us to make these prudent decisions on behalf of those that we serve. I got the opportunity to testify in front of Congress six times and I think that experiences, as you well know, is an incredible opportunity to tell the agency’s story but also be honest about the challenges we face. And I think that Granicus in particular and many of our partners and other vendors in the federal space, state and local space as well, can help really inform the new direction and strategy for each of the federal agencies that have such an important mission to deliver every day.

Terry Gerton This process seems to be moving really, really quickly. Technology is moving faster than we can imagine every 24-hour cycle. So if you were thinking about this a year from now, what problems do you expect to have solved in customer experience and what new ones will we be looking at?

John Boerstler Yeah, that’s such a, an interesting question. And I hope — you know, we were talking about like futurism yesterday with my team. We had all of our federal customer success and sales and all of our product people in the room. And it was so neat to be able to be here, like you said, in this moment where we have these technologies that are rapidly developing in a very dynamic environment and how do we ensure that it’s secure? And how do we ensure if they are aimed at improving experiences, how are we measuring that? So if I were to think forward for a year from now, on April 9th, 2027, I really hope that we’re able to think that this was the moment, when we launched Federal Experience Cloud, when we think about helping agencies become more AI ready, when we think about uniting our software, our data and our services together to be forward deployed with our federal partners and our federal customers, that we made the right investments based on the data and based on the information that our federal leaders and the employees that we work with hand in hand every day were providing us. So I hope that everything in terms of delivering a world-class customer experience, where there are certain agencies that are very good at this and there are certain agency that are still developing this, I hope that we’re in the left seat or the right seat, depending on where you’re driving from, to be able to help them do that. And it has to be an omnichannel experience. Back to your point made earlier, we have to design for all. If the people aren’t accessing information digitally or they don’t wanna receive a text or an email from the government on a particular service, how do we think about that from a broader perspective, but at the same time, continue to enroll more folks in services in a digital way?

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