Customer Experience (CX)
Shaping the journeys residents take through public services
This is entry 2 of 10 in the Experience Tapestry™—a series on how public systems shape trust through experience—featured in our Civic Glossary.
What CX means
Customer experience (CX) looks at the entire journey someone takes with a service. It’s not just one interaction—it’s every touchpoint along the way.
In civic life, “customers” are better understood as residents, clients, or communities. Their experience spans the full arc: learning about a program, applying, receiving support, and navigating follow-up. When those steps add up coherently, people feel seen and supported. When they don’t, confusion and mistrust set in.
Product Experience (ProdX) is sometimes treated as distinct from CX, especially in commercial contexts where products carry a full lifecycle of design, support, and updates. In government and nonprofit services, products—like benefits portals or case management tools—are usually part of the wider customer journey. That means CX and ProdX often go hand in hand.
Customer experience is about the whole journey, not just one touchpoint.
Why CX matters in public systems
When CX is fractured, residents experience government as slow, inconsistent, or unfair.
A resident’s experience doesn’t stop at the front door of a website or office. They carry the memory of each step: Did the program requirements make sense? Was it easy to get help when needed? Did agencies coordinate behind the scenes or push the burden onto them?
When CX is fractured, residents experience government as slow, inconsistent, or unfair. When it’s coherent, services build trust—not only in one agency, but in public systems overall.
What makes CX impactful
Strong CX depends on weaving together multiple disciplines and perspectives:
UX research and design to make each step usable.
Service design to ensure steps connect smoothly.
Employee experience (EX) practices that give staff the tools and support they need to help residents.
Journey mapping and participatory research that capture the lived realities of residents moving across systems.
CX isn’t “extra,” it’s the connective tissue that makes individual services feel like a unified whole.
Participation and research
Good CX can’t be designed from the inside out. It has to be built with residents, through practices such as:
Journey mapping workshops with residents and staff to surface pain points.
Surveys and interviews that trace how people move between services.
Participatory co-design that invites communities to imagine new ways services could flow.
Listening at the journey level reveals barriers that single touchpoints can’t show.
Policy connections to CX
The Biden Administration has made CX a national priority through the 2021 Executive Order.
The Biden Administration underscored the importance of CX with the Executive Order on Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government (2021). The order requires agencies to improve experiences across “high-impact service providers” like the IRS, VA, and Social Security Administration.
By naming CX as a government-wide priority, the order acknowledged what residents have long known: trust isn’t built on policy intent alone—it’s built on how services are experienced.
New York State established its first-ever Office of Customer Experience and appointed a Chief Customer Experience Officer (CXO) to lead it. Their focus is on making public services easier to navigate, reducing duplication, and streamlining journeys across agencies—an explicit recognition of CX as a discipline in state government.
Connections to other experiences
CX builds on User Experience (UX): strong interactions stack into seamless journeys.
CX is a building block for Service Experience (SX), which looks at full end-to-end systems.
CX directly influences Resident Experience (RX), shaping how people perceive government as a whole.
Public Servants’ lens on Customer Experience
Customer experience in civic systems isn’t about “delight” or brand loyalty. It’s about dignity, trust, and fairness. When services work across channels and agencies, residents see government as competent and caring. When they don’t, the damage is deeper than frustration—it erodes confidence in democracy itself.
Customer Experience (CX) is one strand of the Experience Tapestry™—a series on how public systems shape trust through experience—featured in our Civic Glossary. Explore the next entry on Service Experience (SX) to see how end-to-end services determine whether journeys add up to meaningful outcomes.
Build coherent journeys with us
Public Servants helps agencies design experiences that flow coherently across programs and touchpoints. Contact us to learn how we can support your journey mapping and service design efforts.
