Dr Stephen F King of Leeds University Business School looks at the extent to which different approaches to implementing CRM can transform the relationship between government and citizens.
Introduction
‘Choice’ – this small word currently underlies a very large volume of UK government rhetoric. Citizens must be able to choose their schools, hospitals, social housing and potentially any other public service. A popular approach in the private sector, when confronted by customers looking to switch suppliers, is to provide a consistent service for all customer interactions and develop deep customer 'insight' to predict future needs. This is called Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and, when it works well, can encourage customer loyalty and long-lasting profitable relationships. CRM has recently become popular in the UK public sector, especially in local government. This article goes in search of Citizen Relationship Management by exploring the potential of CRM to genuinely deliver improved, citizen-centric public services which have a real impact on quality of life.
Aspirations and Reality
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Analysis of CRM Pathfinders reveals little mention of 'organisational transformation'
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The ODPM produced a three-stage "CRM Strategy Framework" to support the CRM Pathfinder projects in 2001. The stages were: "improving accessibility of services", "transforming a department-based organisation into a customer-centric one" and "delivering innovation in services". An analysis of the Pathfinders reveals a number of initiatives aimed at improving access and some service innovations, but little mention of the critical middle stage: "organisational transformation". The focus is almost exclusively on providing a wider range of more efficient access channels.
The follow-up CRM National Programme tells a similar story. The focus is on rapid resolution of enquiries and on satisfied customers. This is a positive achievement no doubt, but is essentially reactive. Problems with the cost of CRM, with information sharing and joined-up services, and with change management are reported and may well stand in the way of councils achieving wider and deeper use of CRM.
Co-Production and Empowerment
So, can more be done? Take the case of Social Services, a major area of local government. Social services deal with complex situations and vulnerable people. For example, the design and implementation of a care plan for a disabled child will involve several stakeholders: the child, the parents/guardians, a social worker and possibly health and education professionals. It is increasingly being recognised, particularly in health, that the patient should be a "co-producer" of his/her own care and for this to be effective the patient needs to be involved in its design and have a stake in the outcomes. But the private-sector model of CRM assumes the organisation which runs the system owns the customer data and does something "to" the customer rather than "with" them. The customer is on the receiving end, not the producing end.
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The private sector CRM model assumes something is done 'to' the customer rather than 'with' them
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Putting the expensive, sophisticated private-sector CRM systems to one side for a moment, the question now becomes – what kind of ICT can best support the co-production process? Not surprisingly, simple technology such as mobile access to databases, the internet and e-mail come out high on the list. These technologies enables stakeholders to meet at the most appropriate location (e.g. the citizen's home) and work together in a way that is understandable to all. Also 'customer insight' takes on new meaning, where the customer, via ICT and the professionals, is given insight into his/her own situation, needs and possible solutions.
This argument suggests an alternative to the ODPM’s CRM strategic framework (figure 1). Unlike the ODPM's approach, the new model acknowledges the development of a citizen-centric system is far from easy. To emphasise this point a Wall is placed between stages three and four, representing a significant barrier between traditional, bureaucratic, political government organisations and the dis-empowered, and often dis-engaged, citizen.
Figure 1: Stages of Citizen Relationship Management
New Ways of Relating to Citizens
Figure 1 indicates three possible relationships between local authorities and their citizens:
- An informational/transactional relationship
This is where the CRM pioneers are at today. A CRM helps provide efficient responses to citizen enquiries supported by transactional systems to enable appointments to be booked, payments received, benefits paid etc. For this relationship to work fully, services and systems must be integrated. - An insightful relationship: council-driven
This is the aspiration of many local authorities. This corresponds to private sector CRM 'best practice' and to the later stages of the ODPM model. In the private sector many techniques are used to segment customers and target them with products and services. The most popular technique is RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary value), where firms target the most recent purchasers first, then within that group the most frequent purchasers, and within that group the highest spenders. Applying this logic to council customers, one approach to citizen segmentation would be to replace 'amount spent' with 'cost incurred' to the council by the citizen’s use of services creating ‘RFC’ based segmentation (Recency, Frequency, Cost). Councils could then ‘target’ the highest scoring citizens (e.g. vandals, noisy neighbours) in order to improve/reduce their use of services. Recent research reveals that no councils are engaged in this kind of relationship with their citizens yet. - An insightful relationship: citizen-driven
This is radically different to the traditional CRM concept. The relationship is predicated on extensive citizen access to information and systems. This could, for example, be via web-based community portals linked to Geographical Information Systems, which enable citizens to find out more about local services (and their performance) and to challenge service providers to improve performance, through greater citizen involvement in service design and delivery. Early examples of community portals are appearing in some local authorities, such as Wandsworth, whilst North Lincolnshire council is exploring what it means to be held ‘accountable’ to its citizens.
Conclusion
To conclude, instead of simply following the private sector CRM model, and retaining power and control of the relationship in the hands of the local authority, citizen relationship management could be re-balanced, with power being shared between the provider and the consumer. This requires a lot more 'letting go' on behalf of the former and more engagement on behalf of the latter.
Stephen King is Senior Lecturer in Information Management at Leeds University Business School. He teaches on Leeds’ MBA and executive short course programmes. His research interests are in electronic business, electronic government and information systems evaluation. He is currently managing a three-year project exploring the role of social networks in the development and dissemination of good practice in local electronic government. Before becoming an academic he worked as an information systems consultant for the Rover Group and Unisys.
Contact details:
Dr Stephen F King
Senior Lecturer in Information Management
Leeds University Business School
Room GM24
Maurice Keyworth Building
University of Leeds
LEEDS LS2 9JT
England
Tel: +44 (0) 113-3434462
fax: +44 (0) 113-3434465
email: sfk@lubs.leeds.ac.uk
web: www.leeds.ac.uk/lubs