Citizen Experience Excellence 2025

Remember me, Recognise me, Respect me

Last year, in our 2023-2024 CEE report, the research told us to embrace the digital citizen and continue focus on joining up services for end users. This year what’s different..? Citizen experience scores remain largely unchanged, but the political and economic environment, notwithstanding the pressure public sector leaders are under makes the landscape increasingly difficult to navigate.

Citizens expectations are on the rise and as the volume of demand increases, the challenge becomes even more complex.

Despite best efforts, transformation has struggled to keep pace. Our research in this years CEE 2024-2025 report shows that meaningful improvement doesn't have to be complicated, and we have narrowed it down to three core principles focusing on designing for citizen need: Remember me, Recognise me and Respect me.

Remember me

Understand my history, my previous interactions and preferences so I don’t have to start from scratch every time.
Recognise me

Acknowledge my circumstances and tailor services around my needs.
Respect me

Treat me as an individual, with dignity, empathy and fairness. Respect my time and effort.

Jo Thomson

Partner, IGH Customer Transformation

KPMG in the UK

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"Remember me, recognise me and respect me isn't just a sentiment. It's a clear direction that citizens wants to be remembered across channels and departments, they want to be recognised for their unique situations and have relevant service and they want their choices respected in an empathetic way."

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Download the 2025 Citizen Experience Excellence Report

We’ve been running our global Customer Experience Excellence research programme for 15 years. For four years our CEE research has provided a detailed analysis into the nuances of citizen experience, painting a clear picture of what matters most to citizens and how public service organisations can best meet these expectations and needs.

In this report you will learn about:

Key findings of the 2024-2025 Citizen Experience Excellence survey
What citizens want: Remember me, recognise me, respect me
Key findings for sectors
Checklist for great digital service delivery
Our approach

Download the report

The Six Pillars

For the last 15 years, we’ve looked at how the world’s best organisations connect customer experience excellence to lower costs and faster growth. The Six Pillars of experience excellence have been repeatedly established as the universal set of emotional qualities. They define every outstanding customer experience which can create loyalty and drive growth. More relevant than ever, these pillars are providing businesses with an essential way to navigate the coming change.

Organisations that understand and deliver against The Six Pillars have always showcased enhanced outcomes, quick growth and greater shareholder value.

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Integrity

Being trustworthy and engendering trust Integrity

Public sector organisations must continue to invest in building the foundations of integrity, starting with cyber and technology transformation. Getting this right provides a platform for integrity to develop, as without it, investment can be undone in one incident.

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Resolution

Turning a poor experience into a great one

Digital channels are the answer, but this is only part of the solution. It is the data and analytics that sits behind the digital channels that is the enabler for providing citizens with the information they need to self-serve and find resolution without any need to contact the public service organisation.

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Expectations

Managing, meeting, and exceeding citizen expectations

Public sector organisations need to engage with citizens, prioritise their needs, and take decisive action accordingly to ensure money and resources are not wasted on initiatives that aren’t valued by citizens and ultimately do not enhance their experience.

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Time and Effort

Minimising citizen effort and creating frictionless processes

Organisations need to adopt a citizen-focused approach to redesign their citizen service processes, ensuring citizens can easily access the assistance they need from the start. They need to join up the citizen front door with service delivery teams to deliver a seamless experience.

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Personalisation

Using individualised attention to drive emotional connection

Organisation-wide level change is required to achieve a personalised digital experience – using the citizen as the focal point. The type of transformation must incorporate strategic, functional and technological parts of the organisation. Only when the entire organisation works together will public sector organisations be able to truly deliver personalisation at scale.

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Empathy

Achieving an understanding of the customer's circumstances to drive deep rapport

Public sector organisations must recognise these emotional touchpoints and ensure they are managed by emotionally intelligent employees, who are empowered to go the extra mile to relate and prioritise citizens.

Citizen-centric best practice case studies

Leeds City Council

“We are really committed to keeping all channels available, even if digital is the route we are encouraging citizens to go down where possible,” notes Dylan Owen, Head of Digital Transformation at Leeds City Council. Longer term the Council plans to join up technology systems and information sources in order to achieve a single view of the citizen, with just one version of the truth. “That will enable us to really personalise our services through one, comprehensive view of the citizen,” Dylan says. “We are still in the first steps of the journey. But we have a clearer vision now of where we are and where we want to be.”

Dylan Owen
Head of Digital Transformation, Leeds City Council

Read the full case study

Passport Office

“This was about making sure that every process was designed with the customer in mind, thinking through what the impact of any step or decision would be from the customer’s point of view. After all, as well as being staff at the service, we are all customers ourselves so it’s about encouraging everyone to think from that perspective and put themselves in the customer’s shoes. Leaders were asked to personally commit to the customer-centric vision. There was staff engagement, and training along Operational Excellence principles. This phase lasted perhaps 18 months. It was a cornerstone for what happened next around transformation design and implementation, because everyone was starting from a shared position. We continue to reinforce the customer-focused view today.”

Tom Greig
Director of Passports, Citizenship and Civil Registration at the Home Office

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c2c

“What we don’t want is another inefficient way to get in touch which actually frustrates customers. Don’t adopt new channels if you’re not ready for them, are unable to support them properly and if there isn’t a clear purpose for them. And for the channels we do provide, we need to focus on being both responsive & quick, as well as providing a high quality service”

Abu Siddeeq
Customer Experience Director, c2c

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Child Maintenance Service

“We still receive around 2 million calls a year. We recognise that some people are digitally inactive or may have complex needs due to issues like neurodiversity or language barriers, and the telephony channel (including an interpreter if needed) may be the best route for them. Nor can you solve everything online – some issues are complex and our case workers need to delve into them and speak to the parents.”

Simon Hunter
Director, Child Maintenance Service

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Train operator

“The question we ask ourselves is what are the moments of truth in a journey and how can we use technology and AI to support our staff so that they can deliver on them for customers? That’s what it should be geared around. In my view, colleagues are the heroes – and digital is the sidekick that supports them.”

Senior Customer Experience Leader

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2024/25 Customer Experience Excellence report

This year marks the 15th anniversary of our Customer Experience Excellence (CEE) research in the UK. Building on last year's study, “Say hello to your new AI colleague”, this report examines the transformative role of digital and AI technologies in reshaping customer experience. Explore how these technologies can be designed to connect emotionally with customers, build trust, and create a new era of cost-effective, AI-enabled CX.

Click here to read it now

Download the 2024 Citizen Experience Excellence Report

We’ve surveyed citizens from 12 UK regions and had over 55,000 survey responses with over 8,500 detailed verbatim comments. This is our 3rd year of collating the Citizen Experience Excellence report underpinned by the Six Pillars of Customer Experience – grounded in 14 years of research, 40 global markets and 4,000 brands evaluated globally.

In this report you will learn about:

Cost vs value: where are the biggest opportunities to innovate and improve?
Best practice: how are organisations already embracing the digital citizen successfully?
Proven pathways: how can we achieve accelerated progress that delivers for citizens?

Download the report

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