Experts of Experience
Tech Obsession is Failing Citizens (Rescuing Government Customer Service)
Wed, 5 Feb 2025
Government services don’t have to suck. (And no, robots aren’t taking over… yet.)This week, host Lauren Wood sits down with Mike Raker, CTO of Maximus, to crack the code on using AI and machine learning to fix customer experience nightmares — even in the most bureaucratic corners of government. Mike shares exactly why listening beats tech obsession every time, how to balance innovation with red tape, and why “Total Experience Management” is the secret sauce you’ve been missing. They also tackle the AI trends that matter (way beyond ChatGPT), the facepalm-worthy question Mike asks before ANY tech rollout, and how empathy became his ultimate leadership hack in a world obsessed with automation.What are you waiting for? Press play to rethink everything you know about AI, empathy, and how Maximus is ensuring your next DMV visit feels as seamless as possible.Key Moments: 00:00 Who is Mike Raker, CTO of Maximus?03:35 The Role of Innovation in CX06:57 Exactly How Maximus Helps Government Services08:59 Total Experience Management (TXM)14:02 Balancing Innovation and Regulation17:44 The Future of AI in Customer Experience24:27 The Importance of Human-Centered Design in Government34:11 Policy and Responsibility in AI 38:16 Mike Raker’s Expert Advice & Key Takeaways –Are your teams facing growing demands? Join CX leaders transforming their AI strategy with Agentforce. Start achieving your ambitious goals. Visit salesforce.com/agentforce Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org
Chapter 1: Who is Mike Raker and what is his role?
Don't fall in love with your technology. Don't fall in love with your strategy. Fall in love with how you listen. Fall in love with how you watch. Fall in love with really getting an understanding of customers' problems.
That is the name of the game when it comes to CX. I could not agree more.
There's only one outcome that matters to the citizen, and that's their outcome, right? And every person you leave behind is one person that didn't get that service. And it tends to be the more vulnerable parts of the population All customers' missions are unique, but the blind application of technology, just because it's better technology, it very rarely works.
If I don't do this thing, if I don't put this technology in place, if I don't take this little bit of risk in whatever part of the system, how many more citizens are not getting served?
Are you concerned with our policymaking around AI and our speed of policymaking around AI?
Yes and no. The hint of concern to me is
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lauren Wood. Today, I'm joined by Mike Raker, the CTO of Maximus, where their mission is simple yet powerful, making vital government services accessible through transformative technology. Mike is passionate about how AI and machine learning can revolutionize customer experience, as I know many of you are as well.
And I can't wait to explore how he's leveraging these tools to enhance customer journeys, especially within federal and health services. Mike, so great to have you on the show.
Thanks for having me.
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Chapter 2: What is the role of innovation in customer experience?
And I think people that are successful at it are good at understanding those differences, applying their history into new missions, and then harvesting from those organizations and taking them back out, right? And I've had a real pleasure in my career to work with lots of fantastic people, lots of fantastic missions, and hopefully I've contributed equally to what I've gained out of those.
And that makes me a better technologist over time. Regardless of if I'm working in the US or the UK or elsewhere, I think there are certain truths about the market and tech and how you apply it. And to me, one of those main elements in successful companies and individuals is how do you combine technology and the operational understanding of the mission that it's going to get applied to, right?
All customers' missions are unique, but the blind application of technology, just because it's better technology, it very rarely works.
It needs to actually be solving a problem. And I see this so much with AI implementation. I am a customer experience consultant myself, and I have clients who say, we need to use AI. And it's like, for what?
Yeah, why? What are you trying to do? What's the problem? What's the question?
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Chapter 3: How does Maximus enhance government services?
Chapter 4: What is Total Experience Management (TXM)?
Thanks for having me.
So your career spans many different industries from defense primes to startups and scale ups. And I'm curious to know, how has your diverse experience really taught you about innovation? and its role in transforming customer experiences.
Thanks again for having me. You know, I'm a student of the world, and I think part of what's really transformed me over time is, you know, your learning journey is really never done, right? So when you take positions at different companies or different parts of different companies, I've worked across the globe, is you take unique insights from all those roles and people that you meet, right?
And I think people that are successful at it are good at understanding those differences, applying their history into new missions, and then harvesting from those organizations and taking them back out, right? And I've had a real pleasure in my career to work with lots of fantastic people, lots of fantastic missions, and hopefully I've contributed equally to what I've gained out of those.
And that makes me a better technologist over time. Regardless of if I'm working in the US or the UK or elsewhere, I think there are certain truths about the market and tech and how you apply it. And to me, one of those main elements in successful companies and individuals is how do you combine technology and the operational understanding of the mission that it's going to get applied to, right?
All customers' missions are unique, but the blind application of technology, just because it's better technology, it very rarely works.
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Chapter 5: How do we balance innovation with regulation?
It needs to actually be solving a problem. And I see this so much with AI implementation. I am a customer experience consultant myself, and I have clients who say, we need to use AI. And it's like, for what?
Yeah, why? What are you trying to do? What's the problem? What's the question?
What's the problem? Yeah, exactly. I mean, when you think about... people that you work with, companies or organizations that you're working with who are really craving more innovation. What is one lesson or tip you would give them as they're really working to be more innovative if you were to kind of sum it up for us?
Chapter 6: What are the future trends of AI in customer experience?
Certainly at scale, I think one of the things that gets tried too often is manufacturing innovation. It's hard to do. It's impossible to do. There are ways that you can set you as a technology leader. You need to set the conditions through your organization, culture and other elements to make sure the ecosystem for innovation is there.
It needs to have the scaffolding around it to allow it to proliferate. But within those bounds, you need to empower individuals in the organization to innovate because they're the ones that know the technology better than anybody else. They're the ones that know the mission better than anybody else. And that is how you move faster, but how you move faster continuously.
And I think that's one of the things I've tried to bring to every organization that I have is set those conditions for organizational success, not a top-down directional, thou shalt do this, go do AI, try and manufacture innovation because it never works.
You can't force innovation. It's a cultural mindset. What are some of the aspects of that? I'm curious to know, you know, if you have a company who say isn't really happy with their level of innovation, where are some of the first places that you look or, or some of the first actions you suggest?
One of the things I've found in my career that often happens in organizations is you may already be innovating in areas that you don't realize. And so one of the places I often look is what are those flagship customers and programs that have been successful for the company up to this point, right? And what's made them successful?
You often identify really innovative things that are already going on. And even if you don't, you get a really good mindset for what is the real problem you're trying to solve. So you get the understanding that you can then say, all right, these are the types of problems we're truly trying to solve for key customers.
All innovation needs to start and end with solving a problem for these types of things. And when you set an organization around that construct, I think you're much more likely to innovate in the right areas. I think then there are other normal things that you do organizationally.
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Chapter 7: Why is human-centered design important in government services?
Make sure that communication and collaboration are primary, that people can speak up, that vision and the strategy and where you're going forward, that people collaborate on it and it's clear and concise and that people know what good looks like all the way from the customer to the corporate level. And that way you're setting an ecosystem to drive continuous innovation.
I always think of it as kind of like grease the wheels. And it's so often, it's like if communication isn't flowing, if there isn't clear lines of cross-functional communication or clear ownership of different roles, that's just like, it's like rust on your wheels that just prevents everyone from moving smoothly and being able to think innovatively about what it is that they need to do.
Or you end up with the same innovation being done different ways in three parts of the organization. Right.
So you're getting maybe you might be innovating, but you're doing it really inefficiently where, hey, where could I have taken some savings in human capital resources and money and apply that and done two or three different things with that same amount rather than doing the same thing three times?
So your clients with Maximus, I'd love to hear just a little bit, if you could give us a brief overview of the types of organizations that you work with and some of the challenges you commonly face, and then we'll dive in a little bit more into your approaches.
One of the great things about Maximus is we help governments better deliver citizen services, right? So I think most people, particularly in the U.S. and in other countries, have probably engaged with the Maximus system but may not know it. We help the government deliver the services and help the government serve their citizens better, which is the role of government.
Examples of that, we do a lot of business in the state and local market in things like Medicaid eligibility and enrollment in those types of programs to make sure that people are getting access to to the services that they're deserved by the government. At the federal level, we support a range of customers from the VA to the IRS to the SEC to Department of Energy and beyond.
But again, the one truism across all of those, whether it be for health or other services, is how do we make sure that the services that the government are delivering are efficient and effective in serving serving customers as well as in DoD and other places. But that's where I really get excited because what a better way to impact the country than to better allow the government to do their job.
And we do the same thing in particularly in the UK and in Canada.
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Chapter 8: What key insights can we take away from Mike Raker?
We have world-class partners in that environment to help drive the technology envelope, not just internally in Maximus, but with worldwide partners, with people like Salesforce and AWS and ServiceNow and others. Mm-hmm. But, you know, again, the technology itself doesn't solve the problem. You have to understand how to apply it.
And that's really the combination of goodness that I think we've driven in that. And then secondarily is how do you make sure when we deliver total experience management that it's not a singularity, right? That we don't, it's not a one and done that, hey, this is the experience and we're done forevermore and therefore everybody's successful in it. That's not reality, right?
We have extreme focus on data-driven nature of how we deliver that experience and the outcomes for that customer so that we're not only doing it once, but as the mission changes, as the need changes, as policy changes, we can make sure that that citizen service that we're delivering is up-to-date, effective, and as current as it can be.
And technology is always getting applied again and again and again to make it better.
Mm-hmm. What would you say, if you think about the clients that you've worked with, if you were to kind of sum up, what would you say that most organizations struggle with when it comes to their customer experience and really creating a seamless customer experience end to end?
First is the understanding, the understanding. customer base that we serve in our business and the government. I mean, think about the diversity of every individual in the United States that might be going from a service from socioeconomic to where they live, to the languages they speak, to their abilities and anything else, right? I mean, we are a true melting pot. And understanding each of their
unique perspectives on what they want the government to support them in doing. If you're not rooted in that bottom level of, you know, everybody's outcome matters, right? It's hard to make, you know, much headway above that. And I extend that to, that's the customer understanding, the end customer understanding.
I think where industry and government can do better together is how do you have acquisitions and contracts where we as an industrial base are taking responsibility for those outcomes? There's shared risk and shared outcomes and responsibility that when that customer, when that citizen doesn't get the
the service that they've asked for or deserve, that we're sharing in that outcome, whether it's financially or otherwise. And it's not just reputation. We should have skin in the game, right? So that's a move to me away from the T&M and Cost Plus and those types of contracts. To a shared shared responsibility up into cybersecurity risk models. Right.
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