To do: optimize digital forms

To whom does this not sound familiar? Among our clients, we see that improving digital forms is on a "to-do" list somewhere. Everyone knows this is important. Also because it is one of the places where you can directly improve the satisfaction of residents and business owners. But due to lack of time and insight, this task usually remains dangling at the bottom of the list.

A higher ratio; so what?

The key question may be; what does high(er) success rate yield? Why should we care about this? The resident and entrepreneur is used to arranging things online, from banking and insurance to vacations. In addition, he expects everything to run smoothly. So if there is a possibility to handle things online, such as through an online form, it should be done in a user-friendly way. That is why we believe it is important to have the basic processes online set up properly. So that local governments can use the (already limited) capacity at the counter and switchboard for complex matters.

Keep it simple

Recently, National Ombudsman Reinier van Zutphen conducted an investigation into the user-friendliness of the government's digital forms. He too concludes that there are still gains to be made here. To help government agencies on their way, he has formulated a number of principles*;

Involve the resident in developing new digital forms
Consider the resident's wishes
Take advantage of existing initiatives and tips for developing and improving digital forms
Ask citizens to share their experiences with existing digital forms
Improve existing digital forms based on residents' experiences

How to move forward?

A step in the right direction is to start monitoring forms in your organization. This way you can see which forms are started the most, where users leave a form and where the greatest improvement potential lies. Tooling like our Monitor Digital can help you to continuously monitor the performance of digital services and give you insight into this.

Or start with a top 3 of most completed forms. Then ask the resident about their experiences with this, take this feedback seriously and start working with it. Or ask on our Social Intranet about the experiences of colleagues at other government agencies. This way you can also make steps in the right direction together and learn from each other's best practices.

Rome wasn't built overnight either, so let's also be realistic. We believe that it does not have to be very complicated to make short-term improvements.

Would you like to discuss this further? Get in touch with your contact at Shift2 or fill out the form below. Together we'll see where we can improve your organization's frequently used digital forms. We'd love to help you make your to-do list as easy as possible!