Customer experience
Our aim is to make it easier to transact with government through accessible, easy to use digital services.
On this page
Our forms
We’ve baked accessibility and usability into the FormBuilder tool so that every form created offers a good user experience that meets government standards.
We aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at Level AA, as per the NZ Government Web Accessibility Standard. For more on our approach to accessibility see our dedicated page.
By using the UK Government Design System, as recommended by the Digital Public Service team at the Department for Internal Affairs, we leverage all the investment and user testing that has made it so successful and easy to use.
Our forms apply an agency or council’s brand consistently and prominently on each screen of the form so that users know they’re in the right place and who to contact if they need help.
Features like tips, field validation, conditional logic and pre-population help make the task of form filling easier by guiding users, helping them avoid making mistakes and only presenting questions relevant to them.
Accessing the forms
We offer 2 options for people to access forms to give the most appropriate experience depending on the service.
For those forms that are more complex or lengthy with a multi-step process and the need for a review or approval stage, the Business Connect platform gives users a place to work through it and save progress as needed.
These forms follow a pattern that allows a consistent experience across all services and builds familiarity for regular users. The pattern uses templated screens that bookend the form, taking care of the parts of a form which are common like applicant details, uploads, summary, and declaration.
We learn through feedback and user research which features users find most useful and have prioritised accordingly. They include things like:
- reminders for licences coming up for renewal
- the ability to duplicate an application to save starting from scratch
- confirmation emails with details about what to expect next.
For simpler, single step forms we have a long scroll pattern that people can quickly access via a link on a council or agency’s website. It opens the form in a new browser window.
This method widens the range of forms we can deliver as it removes unnecessary tasks like logging in when someone simply wants to provide feedback or make an enquiry.
Further information is available on the Publish your forms page.
Making it easier to deal with government
For our team, making it easier for customers means:
- 1 place to go with 1 password and access to a range of government services
- A consistent experience across different councils and agencies with a familiar user experience
- Forms that are easy to use and understand, reducing frustration and confusion
- A guided experience to help businesses feel confident that they are getting it right the first time
- Time savings through re-using previous application data to make the next applications faster
- Less back and forth with government and receiving outcomes more quickly
- Pre-populated information from authoritative sources such as NZBN and NZ Post.
Feedback and insights
We track the customer experience using a Net Promoter Score in-platform, customer interviews and analytics. The combination of these factors gives us insight into how different services are performing and how the platform is serving users.
People submitting forms are asked if they would recommend the platform to others on a scale from 0 to 10. They can also add a comment and indicate if they would like to be contacted for further feedback.
Those that opt in are then invited to participate in a customer interview. These interviews are conducted weekly and provide data on pain points and opportunities to improve the service. The themes and comments are shared with the relevant government team to help highlight areas for improvement.
Lastly, we have platform analytics that can tell us about completion rates for specific services and help us understand whether there are friction points in a service. We know when a service has a high drop-out rate and can even isolate which fields are creating frustration or causing users to abandon the form.