Kenya's public sector must embrace experience management practices and forge deeper partnerships with the private sector to enhance service delivery for citizens, according to senior government officials and industry experts speaking at a major continental conference.
Kenya School of Government Director General Nura Mohamed addressed delegates at the seventh edition of the Africa Annual Customer Experience Conference 2026, arguing that government institutions cannot modernize in isolation. The call comes as new research underscores the growing commercial and institutional dividends of prioritizing customer experience.
The CX Excellence Maturity 2025 Report by the Institute of Customer Experience (ICX) reveals that 47 per cent of organizations now connect robust customer experience frameworks to stronger revenue performance. Meanwhile, 61 per cent of surveyed entities have invested in staff training programmes, reflecting widespread recognition that employee capability, empathetic engagement, and thoughtful experience design are foundational to rebuilding public trust.
Mohamed emphasized that service delivery in the public sphere operates under fundamentally different constraints than in private enterprise, with distinct structural demands, mandates, and scale. Nonetheless, he argued that citizens' expectations for seamless, respectful interaction with government services mirror those of consumers in any sector.
"Public and private sectors must align, from silos to synergy, from competition to co-creation of better experiences," Mohamed told attendees. "Let us commit to power this next frontier, to deliver not just services but excellence in every experience."
To institutionalize this shift, the Kenya School of Government has proposed establishing a dedicated Customer Experience Center of Excellence. The proposed body would develop policy guidance, set service standards, and ensure consistency across the breadth of government departments and agencies.
ICX Kenya Chairman Joseph Choge reinforced the strategic imperative, stating that experience management and customer experience must be understood not as operational afterthoughts but as core strategic disciplines.
"Across both the public and private sectors, we are witnessing a fundamental shift. Competitive advantage is no longer defined by product, price, or efficiency alone; it is defined by experience," Choge said. He cautioned that delivering on this expectation demands a rigorous, data-driven understanding of what customers and citizens actually need, and the organizational capacity to translate insight into measurable improvement.
Choge noted that while the private sector typically pursues personalization and frictionless transactions, the public sector's distinctive contribution lies in cultivating institutional trust through transparency, reliability, and citizen-centered systems. Despite these operational differences, he argued the underlying standard remains identical: experiences that are consistent, meaningful, and fundamentally human in their design.