Over the past decade, in the spirit of its Batho Pele “People First” initiative, the South African government has been moving from an “inside-out” to an “outside-in” service delivery approach, focusing gradually more on the needs, perspectives and satisfaction of citizens. Most people that depend on government services are involuntary “clients”, whose service relationship with government derives from their obligations as citizens, the rights of other citizens or poverty, physical disabilities and the need for critical aid.

, sales and marketing director at Ocular Technologies believes that core to the success of a citizen-centric service delivery strategy is the contact centre, through which customer satisfaction and, consequently, service quality and performance can continuously be measured. However, a contact centre should not be positioned merely as an add-on, but must be fully integrated into the applicable government body with clear points of contact with divisions outside of the centre.

“Building a great organisation isn`t about `aggregating eyeballs`, `increasing stickiness` or embracing any other slogan that masquerades as a strategy,” he says. “It`s about rethinking the most basic relationship in business: the one between you and your stakeholders. How well do you meet their needs? How smoothly do you solve their problems? How quickly do you anticipate what they`ll want next?

“In order for government bodies to provide better services to citizens, they need to ensure convenient and consistent access across all interaction channels as well as implement flexible, scalable technology systems to support their service delivery initiatives.”

The past few years have seen explosive growth in the number of communication channels with new ones such as Internet e-mail, co-browsing, SMS, mobile Internet and chatting giving customers far more choice when interacting with an organisation. “Historically, government services depended almost entirely on form-filling and face-to-face meetings. Over the next decade, the preferred channels will become telephone, Internet and mobile and government should invest in the necessary services to take advantage of these new technologies as they emerge and gain popularity,” Dinat continues.

“In addition, the most successful contact centres are those that form part of an overall Customer Relationship Management (CRM) vision. Since government delivers a service rather than a product, to citizens rather than consumers, the CRM strategy should address the relationship with the nationals that are making use of its services,” he states.

A CRM strategy takes as its input the overall business strategy and financial goals and presents a clear vision and implementation plan of how an organisation would like to be perceived and behave towards its customers. In terms of government, Dinat stresses that a citizen-centric business philosophy and culture is necessary to support effective service processes. “Services must be designed around citizens` needs to ensure optimal delivery, achieve policy goals and reduce costs through streamlining processes.

“This requires government departments to increase their understanding of the needs and behaviour of citizens, define different citizen segments, develop modern channels and manage the migration to them. A CRM project team also needs to be established to define and enforce common clear principles such as national standards, devolution of delivery, flexibility in service provision and greater choice. Basing services on what citizens want is crucial to technology-enabled public service transformation.”

According to Dinat, CRM should involve:

* Acquiring and continuously updating knowledge about citizen needs and behaviour;

* Applying knowledge about stakeholders to continuously improve performance;

* Accounting for the immediate needs of citizens and addressing these with suitable business processes;

* Integrating the activities of marketing, human resources and service delivery to achieve a common goal;

* Implementing appropriate systems to support customer knowledge acquisition, sharing and measure the effectiveness of the CRM strategy; and

* Constantly aligning marketing, HR and service inputs to changing needs to maximise sustainability.

“It is important to note that a CRM strategy is not a once-off event. It should be an interactive process dependent on the behaviour of citizens and changes in their requirements,” Dinat says. “The strategy and plans must be re-evaluated and adjusted on a regular basis. The `CRM in 90 days` era is mercifully over and the well-worn management question, `Is it done yet?` has been replaced by the refreshingly proactive, `What`s next?`.

“If government bodies can get it right to reform and modernise their contact centres properly, they will not only improve the consistency and quality of services and increase satisfaction amongst citizens, but also enhance its image and ultimately fulfil its Batho Pele vision.”



Tags: Ocular  Technologies