New study from PayIt outlines insights from 1800 U.S. and Canadian customers to help government agencies achieve efficiency gains
“We wanted to explore how consumers’ experiences influence their adoption of digital channels in their interactions with government agencies,” said Kelly Davis-Felner, Chief Marketing Officer at PayIt. “The study makes it clear that government agencies can achieve widespread use of online services, but only when they offer an intuitive customer experience. That leads to big gains in operational efficiency and resident satisfaction.”
The report revealed key insights, including:
- Achieving 80%+ digital adoption is possible. Only 13% of consumers reported they plan to stay analog, saying they probably or definitely will not pay their next government bill online. The vast majority of residents expect — or can be persuaded — to go digital.
- Customers bring high expectations to government interactions. Users today expect features they would find in any commercial digital experience. They are also motivated to provide more personal information when they get more value in return: For example, 89% of respondents would be motivated to create an account rather than pay as a guest if they can get reminders of upcoming payments.
- Security and privacy concerns cause hesitation. Most of the respondents view the relative security of digital transactions as less secure than in-person, over the phone, or via mail — with 28% of the least likely to transact online respondents citing security as the primary reason they don’t plan to use this channel.
- Every generation prefers digital, but their experiences vary. Even among the oldest cohort, the majority of respondents have made a government payment online in the last 18 months. However, the perceived experiences of the different generations were perhaps surprising: 75% of the youngest cohort (18-29 years) experienced at least one challenge when paying for government services.
- Consumers are still unsure about artificial intelligence (AI). As government leaders explore the potential of AI to improve service delivery, they should proceed with caution. Only 56% percent of respondents are somewhat or very comfortable with government agencies using AI, while the other 44% of respondents said they are somewhat or very uncomfortable with this new technology.
