Omni-Channel made concrete. A qualitative study to explore its building blocks

Abstract

Citizens interact with government agencies frequently thorugh a variety of interaction channels (such as the phone, email and websites). Channel management is the tool for governments to deploy and manage their service channels. Commonly, this is done through ‘multi-channel’ approaches where channels are managed relatively independently. A newer approach called “omni-channel management (OCM)” is said to improve service delivery by promising more seamless, con-sistent and inclusive user journeys. However, despite growing conceptual inter-est, the literature lacks a structured account of how OCM works in practice and what public sector organisations should specifically work on to implement it In this study, we address this gap through a focused literature review and four expert workshops (with n=15 experts) spanning academia, government and the private sector. Our findings yielded a refined definition of OCM for the public sector and propose a number of building blocks for OCM that can be structured in three tiers of importance. This provides government agencies with a structured basis for developing and prioritising their OCM strategies and creates a basis to develop more full-fledged OCM strategies.