Access the podcast to hear Greg Reeder, Senior Director of Public Sector Marketing at Datadog, and Martha Dorris, Founder of DCI Consulting, discuss how agencies increase agility and efficiency with innovative customer experience strategies, digital transformation and proactive application monitoring tools. Listen to practical use cases from the State Department, IRS and CBP showcasing how human-centric design increases engagement and public trust. Dive deeper into related resources like Datadog’s CX eBook, explore solutions tailored for public agencies at datadog.com/gov, and follow The CX Tipping Point® Podcast for ongoing insights into how private-sector CX practices are transforming government service delivery.
Anthony Jimenez
Welcome back to CarahCast, the podcast from Carahsoft, a trusted government IT solutions provider. Subscribe to get the latest technology updates in the public sector. I'm Anthony Jimenez, your host from the Carahsoft production team.
On behalf of Datadog, we would like to welcome you to today's podcast. In this episode, Greg Reeder with Datadog sits down with Martha Dorris, founder of Dorris Consulting International and a trailblazer in government customer experience to discuss how public sector agencies can unlock new levels of efficiency through AI, real-time data, and observability. From the State Department's digital passport renewal platform to CX-driven improvements at the IRS and CBP, Greg and Martha explore how modern monitoring tools and strategic design can streamline service delivery, reduce costs, and build citizen trust.
Whether you're a technologist, policymaker, or federal leader, you'll gain valuable insights into creating faster, more reliable, and more user-centered government services. Martha Dorris, former director of GSA and current CEO for DCI Consulting, and Greg Reeder, senior director of public sector marketing for Datadog, will discuss a new era of efficiency, leveraging AI, data, and modernization to improve public services.
Greg Reeder
Well, thank you for coming today. We're here at Carahsoft Studios doing a CarahCast, and today I'm excited about the topic we're going to discuss, which is a new era of efficiency, how we leverage AI, data, and modernization to improve public services. So, before I get to the intro, I thought maybe I'd do my own little intro to talk a little bit about Datadog and why this is relevant to what we're going to discuss today.
So, part of the discussion is government organizations handle vast amounts of data, ranging across public services to critical infrastructure monitoring. Think about renewing your driver's license or monitoring nuclear power generation. It's very complex.
And ensuring seamless operations while maintaining high levels of service require deep visibility in some of the world's most complex systems. So, without real-time monitoring and observability, which is what we do at Datadog, agencies can face system slowdowns, broken processes, security vulnerabilities, and the consequences range from frustration by end users to loss of trust in government to compromise of security. Consider state and local unemployment agencies that faced a deluge of people trying to get services during COVID-19 and they weren't ready for it.
Or the healthcare.gov rollout that didn't go so well a few years ago. So at Datadog, we help government agencies monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize their IT environments with things like application performance monitoring, real-time user monitoring, synthetic monitoring, which I think is cool because you can detect issues and simulate what's going to happen before it happens so that you can reduce system downtime, to cloud security management, infrastructure monitoring, and AI-powered analytics that helps government especially reduce downtime and reduce the manual effort required to maintain a good customer experience for the end users. But while Datadog has a platform to help the public sector observe, monitor, and take action to keep their systems running at peak, we're joined today by someone who is instrumental in helping improve customer experience and services for citizens in government.
So, we're honored to welcome you, Martha Dorris, a trailblazer in government customer experience and digital transformation. As founder and CEO of Dor
ris Consulting International, Martha has dedicated her career to improving government services, citizen engagement, and public sector leadership. Before launching your consultancy, you spent 34 years at the General Services Administration leading digital service delivery and CX initiatives before they were even sexy.
Martha Dorris
Exactly.
Greg Reeder
So, you've been instrumental in transforming federal services into modern digital platforms, making them more accessible and user-friendly. You've also founded the Service to Citizens Award, which I want to get into a little bit later, where you recognize leaders improving government services, and you co-host the annual Customer Experience Summit. You continue to shape the field through the Citizen Services Newsletter and the CX Tipping Point Podcast.
So not busy at all.
Martha Dorris
No.
Greg Reeder
Thank you. Welcome. Thank you for joining us today.
So, since we're talking about customer experience, I thought we'd just jump right in to talk about how that, in the big picture, makes a more efficient government. But first, let's get into your journey, how you got into public service and how it led to your current role.
Martha Dorris
Well, thank you. I'm very happy to be here, and this is my favorite topic. So, as you mentioned, I worked in GSA for 34 years.
And honestly, a lot of my time at GSA, I spent representing the US government to other governments talking about how the government delivers services. But I would go to all these other countries, and they had national strategies for service to the citizen, and we did not have that. And then I went into the Office of Citizen Services, where I was there, I think about 13 years, running the front door to the government and the contact center.
And we were involved in every major national emergency, whether it was Rita, Wilma, Katrina, whether it was a bombing in Mumbai. We were always involved in helping the public navigate the government bureaucracy. And I got the exposed, I guess, to the discipline of customer experience.
And because it had so many aspects of, you know, whether how you make decisions about customers or that impact customers, or what your strategy is, that I knew when I retired that that's what I wanted to do. And so, I started my, you know, my consulting company, and the Service to the Citizen Awards, and everything around how do I break down the barriers for improving the way the government delivers services to the public.
Greg Reeder
Wow. That's amazing. And the fact that we didn't have a strategy, and you were going up against people that do, I mean, that's motivation in and of itself to find a way to solve a problem.
Martha Dorris
I mean, I can tell you, when you said before it was cool, it was not cool. They thought I was crazy. But anyway, you know, just proves when you've got an idea you believe in that, you know, you just, persistence is one of my good traits.
That's good.
Greg Reeder
Well, speaking of good traits, you have a podcast as well called the CX Dipping Point. And one of those episodes I listened to, you were with Angela Render. She was the branch chief for content strategy at the IRS.
Now whether you do or don't like the IRS, it's an amazing organization with the tremendous amount of complexity and requirements to make sure citizens are happy. And I thought what was interesting in that episode, you talked about with Angela how they have to observe and understand millions of page interactions, what people are looking for, what is broken, where they fell off, how they can help people better. Even more so, the customer experience is beyond just the nuts and bolts of making sure the system works.
In the case of the IRS, is the person angry? Are they experiencing loss? They have to change their filing status.
They're a new citizen. They've never done their taxes before. You have to take all that into consideration from an IT perspective before you can even deliver an effective system.
So, with that as a backdrop, maybe what's your perspective on how you define customer experience and more importantly, what strategies agencies can use to help make that experience better?
Martha Dorris
So, if you take a look at customer experience from a definition perspective, it's really the perception that all of your customers have when they interact with anybody or anything in your organization. So, it does bring in the emotion piece of and the brand of what do people think about when they go to use your brand. And on the private sector side, you can think about and just too, well, customer experience is really like the end to end journey.
Brings the emotion in from the time a customer has a need through the actual transaction. And so, one quick story is around like a friend of mine used a mobile app to order under armor shorts for his son. And so, the shorts came in, the mobile experience, which is kind of a user experience was great.
They got the shorts and two pairs fit, one pair didn't. So, they went to the storefront to exchange that pair, but they couldn't do it because they don't do exchanges from what you order online. But they did take them back and then he bought a new pair.
So fast forward, they were supposed to get a refund for the other pair, and they never got it and they never got it. So, then they're calling the contact center to say, okay, I turned these shorts in, but we needed a different pair. Bottom line is he had a good experience when he called the contact center.
He had a good experience in the store. He had a good experience in the mobile app. But overall, he probably won't order shorts like that because from the beginning to the end, none of that backend was connected.
And so, the model is, you can build good systems and good single interactions, but you really need to pay attention to that end to end journey because it matters how people feel about your brand at the end. So, your example of the IRS is a great one because what they did was they went through a process of determining and reviewing thousands and thousands of pages and they settled on the issue of a first time filer. And that's where they were able to, you know, and they took the, like you said, the emotion into it.
Like, you know, when you deal with the IRS, it's nerve wracking. And for most people, when they deal with the government, they don't normally come to the government in the best time in their life. Right.
They need benefits. They need services. And so, the experience side of it really, to me, always connected with me because you need to add that empathy and good service in addition to, you know, what you would normally provide.
So I think, you know, when you think of the IRS, you know, none of us like to pay taxes, but it matters whether they have information in plain language that people can actually understand because they're more likely to pay their taxes if they have a good experience and they can understand what to pay.
Greg Reeder
And if they trust the system and they understand the system, you've got to take all of those out. You keyed on something that was interesting, too, and you talked about the monitoring. Datadog has one of our capabilities is real time user monitoring.
One of the customers we helped was Forbes on their website. In the case of Under Armour, how did that workflow break? Real time user monitoring can help agencies understand where are people falling off?
Where did they abandon things? Where did they get stopped? Is the code broken?
Is the process broken? So, it's huge to be able to understand what the user is doing. But the other part of that is to make sure that that whole process is efficient.
And we as we know, efficiency is a huge word today, especially in the current government interest in making government more efficient under immense pressure to modernize systems, to make them more efficient overall. So maybe to pivot a little bit to how do you see customer experience methodologies making government more efficient? It seems almost counterintuitive that having a better end user experience is going to make government efficient, but it can.
So, I thought maybe I'd ask you that question.
Martha Dorris
Yeah, great question. I think that the priority is digital first, but not digital only. And so, we'll deal with the digital first for now, right?
So, whether you can conduct, find the information or conduct your business or your transaction online. And so when you do that and you do your monitoring information is critical because both from the standpoint of making decisions in where you put your money, how you identify pain points, how you create efficiencies, all of that depends on both your operational data, which you're talking about, where how long does it take to conduct a transaction? How long are people on the site?
Where do they drop off the site? So, you're in essence, you're actually mapping that journey through the data that you're getting through monitoring the system as well as getting customer experience data. And when you pull those two together, you can really start to identify where those major gaps are, pain points.
So, like I said, you can prioritize where to put your limited resources. One of the big things around digital first is you want people to be able to solve the problem that they have the first time they go on that website. And so, because and this is one of the reasons why websites are so important is because if they if the website doesn't work and they're falling off or they're not understanding something, what's the first thing they're going to do?
They're going to look for a number. They're going to go to the chat. They're going to try to go and talk to somebody on the phone, which is immensely more cost prohibitive or it's more expensive than doing this, doing the doing the self-service on the website.
So that's one of the big pieces of efficiency. I mean, you take, you know, you monitor the system so you know where the problems are and you're constantly looking for ensuring that you have like modern, secure websites so that people can conduct their business in a self-service way so that they're not going to more costly channels.
Greg Reeder
That's very interesting. And you mentioned the first contact perspective. I was also reading a blog of yours that you pointed out in January how the Trump administration can leverage customer experience to deliver a more efficient government.
Your first contact perspective was one of those.
Martha Dorris
Right.
Greg Reeder
You gave him 10 ideas.
Martha Dorris
Yeah.
Greg Reeder
10 ideas. I and you're spot on of being able to like read the tea leaves of what they were about to embark upon to make government more efficient. Maybe a little bit.
Martha Dorris
Hopefully somebody's listening.
Greg Reeder
Yes. Well, that's kind of my question. Is it for a more free form question?
You gave him 10 ideas. First contact was one of them. Maybe share another example or a story or maybe a couple other points that you had for government in this case, the Trump administration, but just government overall of what they should do in a priority or where they need to attack the problem.
Martha Dorris
Well, I mean, customer experience in its essence, one of the first things that you have to do is identify who your customers are. And so, spending time trying to solve problems that people are not really your customers. And that sounds like an easy thing, but it's really in the government there were always, you know, discussions, let's say, about who your customers are.
But even the mapping journeys, using customer experience, design principles, bringing people into the design process that are going to use the systems. You don't want to design a service that you're going to use on the border that requires you to have Wi-Fi and there's no Wi-Fi. Right.
So, you need to think about who you're serving in that from a design perspective so that you're not designing things that they don't use. And then getting feedback from the customers. I know, you know, when I was at GSA, people would say, oh, this, you know, this service that we're providing, this is great.
But when you go and get feedback specifically from your customers and close that feedback loop, then you can really identify where the problem areas are. And again, as we discussed previously, streamlining that process so that it actually is increases productivity in the government and efficiency, as well as reducing the administrative burden that you place on the customers that you're that you're serving.
Greg Reeder
Well, I don't know how much time we've had. This has been an amazing experience. But I mentioned in the opening, I didn't want to forget about this question.
It's not directly related to what we've talked with customer experience, but it is something that you've been working on for customer experience, which is nominating a champion for change. And that is the Service to Citizens Award, which I mentioned in the opening. Seems like a great program.
Can you discuss a little bit about the program and why you started it?
Martha Dorris
Well, thank you so much. I mean, again, when you take a go back to why I was what I was going to do when I left the government and one of the things that I found was that people who are on the front lines delivering service don't get the recognition that they deserve. The technology people have their awards or whatever.
And so, I wanted to create something that was really about the impact of the technology that is implemented. And so, we created it. We're going into our eighth year.
And honestly, we started as a luncheon at the Willard and now we're at a black-tie event at the Waldorf Astoria on September 19th. And so, it really is, like I said, to elevate and honor the people in the public servants and their industry partners. I mean, I think some of this crosses over into we can't in the government, we can't do it alone, right?
Like we have to have partners that we that we, you know, trust and believe in what we're doing. And so, you know, we didn't talk a lot about trust in government, but some of this does directly lead to the trust that the public has in the agency. I, you know, I'm a little bit of a renegade pushing back on the big trust numbers.
I don't know that people are trusting government right now. They don't in the you know, we have a divided country where you've got 50 percent of people think one way and 50 percent think the other way. And so, agencies really delivering good services.
And that's really what customer experience is about, you know, to kind of circle back. It's around creating efficient, effective government services. You just use these customer experience principles and practices to actually make it happen.
And we recognize people who have delivered digital experiences or who have broken down barriers to cross agencies. And there's a whole bunch of categories that we have. And then we have a government executive of the year, an industry executive of the year, customer experience trailblazer, a lifetime achievement award and like a rising star.
So, I think it's a really a feel good event and a time to really, you know, like I said, honored and celebrate the good work of public servants and their partners.
Greg Reeder
Well, that's wonderful. And thank you for doing that. I was a former government executive.
And I think today, especially when we hear in the news that you want to make government more efficient and there's massive people being let go. And you have to separate the fact that people are trying to do a great job of helping fellow citizens and the system that may not let them do that. And the fact that you can recognize the hard work of people that are trying to make it work is very impressive.
Martha Dorris
So, thank you.
Greg Reeder
Thank you.
Martha Dorris
It's definitely a feel good night. And a lot of people, you know, help. Like we have volunteers the day of the whole that like we don't really.
So, it's a it's a nice thing. Thank you.
Greg Reeder
Well, I guess in closing, I wanted to reiterate at Datadog, we're interested in helping people be more efficient, do their jobs better, save costs and using data understand how to make all those things happen. And from your work and customer experience, you're doing a tremendous amount to help people do the same and make better experiences for Americans and citizens everywhere. So, I appreciate your time today and for what you do.
So, thank you for joining us.
Anthony Jimenez
Dive deeper into related resources like Datadog’s CX eBook, explore solutions tailored for public agencies at datadog.com/gov, and follow The CX Tipping Point® Podcast for ongoing insights into how private-sector CX practices are transforming government service delivery.
Thanks for listening and thank you to our guests, Martha Dorris and Greg Reeder. Don't forget to like, comment and subscribe to CarahCast and be sure to listen to our other discussions. If you'd like more information on how Datadog can assist your organization, please visit www.carahsoft.com or email us at datadogmarketing@carahsoft.com.
Thanks again for listening and have a great day.