20 Jul 2007

Radical customer focus and public services

We had a great dinner party conversation last night about customer focus, and what radical custoemr focus would mean for public services. Here’s a note Scott and I produced afterwards. Very glad of your comments

At first sight the idea that all public services should be wholly customer focused seems obvious.

We largely agreed it is desirable. Ed Mayo’s Playlist for Public Services offers an excellent prescription, clear and compelling. The “Ideal Government” experience called ThePublicOffice proves it works. It’s illuminating and refreshing for public services providers to immerse themselves in the customer perspective, and it’s a good way to work alongside their business service providers.

Yet it’s not happening. The Playlist still seems fresh and radical but was published two years ago. Public services simply do not have the dialogue with their customers that they would need to determine what customers want. Indeed, if public services just did exactly what customers wanted, then government might not be recognizable as government.

So what’s the problem? Why is it such a radical, threatening or difficult idea to be wholly customer-focussed?

There are deep symptoms that all is not well. Services are complex on the receiving end, requiring people in difficult crises to become experts in putting their service packages together. We have profession-oriented services, not customer or patient-oriented ones.

Buyers and suppliers work in an adversarial contractual relationship instead of a shared approach informed by the needs of the end customer. Suppliers meekly do what procurers ask; they don’t challenge their clients even when it would be in the end-customers’ interests for them to do so.

We don’t test or pilot new ideas or projects with citizens. We don’t consult effectively. In one case 80% of the problems encountered in a major problem would have been identified by “walking through” the process first.

We should road-test new public services before roling them out. But political timescales don’t allow for piloting; the Minister will be gone before the lessons come in.

First we have to unpack the immense complexity of what we mean by the customer, and the difference between customers and citizens.

What is it we are to be driven by: the choices and elective behaviour of customers, or the sense of civic duty of citizens? Are we to be driven by the opinions they hold, their physical well-being, or the actions they take? Are we concerned about the opinions of those who don’t use services, and how can we be driven by the requirements of people who might never use a service more than once? Do we prize expert stakeholder opinions over possibly ill-informed lay preferences?

When you do ask customers/patients what it seems you hear very clearly that the answer is surprisingly little. They want the basics from public services, not gold taps. They want less surgery, fewer drugs.

Simply to listen to them is the first huge step forward, and gives them immense relief.

It’s not all easy. They can be ambivalent, change their minds or give different answers depending on how you pose the question. They might say they only want to give their name and address once, and at the same time that they don’t want their tax, welfare and health records joined up.

They can be apathetic.

And, of course, some are intent on gaming or undermining the system. Services need to identify and deal with such exceptions. But public services that treat terrorists, crooks and fraudsters as the rule will alienate the generally law-abiding majority. To do this builds e-enabled public services on the wrong relationship between the customer/citizen and the state.

What can we do?

It may seem in terms of customer focus that many public services are something of a desert. There’s an obvious huge “win” out there; potentially this desert is fertile. To irrigate it we need to add formal, customer-oriented service design as we transform and e-enable public services.

Some first-grade public services are inevitably centralized and capital intensive: centres of excellence with specialist medical equipment for example. But the information parts of the service can flow freely and at no cost. There’s no reason not to have people well-informed, helping themselves and each other, offering and sharing feedback.

A key ingredient for effective public services is empathy and caring about outcomes. We hear of major departments taking senior officials through “back to the floor” programmes.

A possible quick win would be to appoint “problem managers”, who stay with you for the duration of a difficult episode such as bereavement or ID theft. They “own the problem” and secure the resources you need, regardless of origin.

For public services to show empathy and become customer focused, large numbers of people will have to do things differently, because they feel differently about it personally. You can find groups of people who happily agree that this is important. Some will never “get it” and will simply have to be told when the time is right in no uncertain terms that this is how future public services will be. Let’s focus oour efforts on those who can make a difference and are ready to be converted. Ends

Did we cover the salient points? Did we get it right?

Posted by William Heath on 20/07/07 at 8:13pm
Categories · "What do we want?" · Design: Co-creation · Design: user-oriented · Foundation of Trust · Save Time and Money

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20 Jul 2007

Radical customer focus and public services

Ideal Government

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20 Jul 2007

Radical customer focus and public services

Ideal Government

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