The
Institute of Customer Service’s latest research, ‘
Citizens and Customers: Further Building the Case for Customer Service in the Public Sector’, based on qualitative responses from 6,000 customers and 24 in-depth interviews with public sector leaders, highlights the unique set of challenges that public sector organisations face in delivering services to citizens. The research describes what excellent customer service looks like in the context of the public sector and makes specific recommendations on how organisations and government can ensure a sustainable focus on customer service to citizens.
The public sector are among the lowest performing sectors in the UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI), the national measure of satisfaction published twice a year by the Institute of Customer Service, though there is a significant variation of performance between different types of organisations. The sector faces a unique set of challenges in delivering customer. Often public service organisations provide services to vulnerable individuals who have no choice of alternative provider; sometimes there is a statutory obligation to provide services to people or groups who do not seek their involvement. A key theme of the research is the challenge of providing citizens in critical need, who may require support from a variety of agencies, with a coherent, seamless customer service rather than a disjoined set of interactions.
The key conclusions of the report include:
The report highlights a number of key enablers of excellent customer service in the public sector, including the importance of focusing on customer insight, co-creation of services with customers, simpler processes and employee engagement.
It also identifies three different types of leadership that are central to creating a customer-focused culture:
- Political leadership: The political will to improve customer service, with a long-term commitment across government, continuity of leadership in key government departments and a clear strategy about which parts of the public sector will lead and deliver it. There needs to be a sustainable vision for customer service in the public sector which orientates service around the citizen, so that customers interact with the public sector as a coherent whole rather than as a separate set of functions. This vision should be based on a consensus across political parties and between political and administrative leadership.
- Executive leadership: Senior executives from the national and local public sector interviewed for the research highlighted a number of key leadership competences including the ambition to set out a clear vision which employees and citizens can relate to; resilience; the ability to engage genuinely with employees; change management; and the ability to develop partnerships with other agencies and organisations.
- Collaborative leadership: Many leaders recognised that collaboration between agencies and being able to agree joint priorities will be increasingly important in a in a context where resources are scarce. They also urged that collaboration needs to be for a defined purpose – to save money, improve services, or allow more services to be delivered for the same money.
The research features a number of examples of good customer service practice in the public sector identified by research respondents. It highlights that excellent customer service requires not only consistently high standards in individual organisations, but also strategic support from leadership and systematic collaboration across inter-connecting agencies, departments and partnerships.
The research concludes with a set of practical recommendations, to embed a customer service ethos within organisations and government. These include:
• Government to set a clear objective for the UK to become world leader in customer service and incentivise effective collaboration between agencies, to promote a coherent citizen experience
• Build a customer-focused culture in organisations, focusing especially on customer insight; co-creation of services with customers; simpler processes; employee engagement; recruiting employees who reflect the diversity of the communities they serve
• Develop skills and capabilities in key areas including emotional intelligence; coaching and people-management skills; business improvement
• Harness information technology to improve services
• Data transparency to provide better information about performance and benchmarking and enable a more coherent, transparent approach to investment or rationalisation of decisions
• Measure all elements of the customer experience
• Encourage all government departments and agencies to undertake independent customer service accreditation
• Publish an independent benchmark of customer service performance of government agencies based on a consistent set of customer service measures
Jo Causon, CEO of the
Institute
commented:
“In order to deliver a shared vision of excellent customer service across the public sector there needs to be a consensus and commitment across political parties, a strategic, long-term focus with continuity of leadership across the public sector. Customer service needs to be a central objective for organisations with leadership accountability and personal objectives linked to customer service at all levels.”