Citizen Service
July 21, 2006
In 1993, President Clinton declared that "public officials must embark upon a revolution within the Federal Government to change the way it does business." By establishing a set of Customer Service Standards for all executive agencies, he hoped to provide "service to the public that matches or exceeds the best service available in the private sector."
Thirteen years later, the revolution plods on. While many agencies have made great strides in bringing themselves closer to their "customers," many more still are struggling to keep up with the ever-higher standards of the private sector. In her paper "Government Innovation around the World," Dr. Elaine Kamarck traces this demand for "citizen service" - private sector service from public sector organizations - to the advent of the information age.
"New information technology," she argues, "[changes] the private sector so quickly that the experience of citizens in the private sector and the public sector [is] increasingly divergent." Accustomed to the new hyper-efficiency of private sector customer service, Dr. Kamarck suggests, citizens began to view government organizations as "hopelessly obsolete and unresponsive."
Compounding this problem is the monopolistic nature of government services, which renders government agencies relatively immune to drops in customer satisfaction - at least in the short term. But as Laura Ursney notes in her recent piece in the Harvard Government Innovators Network, "there’s a saying that a happy customer tells one or two others, whereas an unhappy customer tells at least nine people and repeats the tale over the course of years."
Left unchecked, these ripples of discontent can flow together over time and form a current that threatens even the mightiest of government agencies. Ultimately, says Dr. Kamarck, this revolution in "citizen service is about restoring trust in government." And not surprisingly, the solution has its "roots in the private sector."
In exploring ways in which government agencies have met this citizen service challenge, Dr. Kamarck identified several themes of successful reform initiatives:
- The one-stop shop: a place or internet portal where citizens can conduct all of their transactions with an agency at once
- Ask the customer: find out customers expectations and act on their feedback
- Develop public standards: establish measures of organizational performance and hold the organization publicly accountable for achieving them
- Training: institute formal customer service training for government employees
The GCA.com staff is interested in exploring these and other ways in which government agencies have adopted principles developed by private industry to better serve their customers, and we want your input. What are the lessons that governments still have to learn from private-sector service? What are the challenges agencies face in adopting these practices? Are there areas of customer service in which the government is a pioneer? Please share your thoughts.
Thoughts or reactions? Please send them to us.