2005 Leadership in Customer Service Report: New Expectations, New Experiences

This change is bigger than eGovernment alone; it implies an entirely new vision of leadership in customer service. This comprehensive study examines the state of leadership in customer service in government, from the perspectives of both governments and the citizens they serve.

Today, the basic drive to put services online has approached its limits. While a valuable tool, eGovernment has not led to the type of reinvention of service that many people expected it to during its early years. In response to pressures to deliver even greater public-sector value, some government leaders are making moves toward flexible, multi-channel services, fostering new levels of collaboration within and across agencies and sharing information for seamlessly integrated service delivery—all with a view to transform how the citizen is served. Government agencies taking these steps represent the vanguard of what we see as the new leadership in customer service.

Leadership in Customer Service: New Expectations, New Experiences is a departure from Accenture's annual survey of the global eGovernment environment. It presents the results of study of how well governments today measure up against a new vision of service delivery—leadership in customer service. It examines 22 countries, not only for the depth and breadth of their online programs, but also for how well they are delivering citizen-centered, cross-government, multi-channel service and providing proactive communications and education about those services. For the first time ever, our global survey also presents a comprehensive picture of what citizens in all 22 of these countries think about governments' service delivery performance.

The study revealed four main findings:

eGovernment is well advanced and should now be an integral component of a much broader service delivery agenda.
EGovernment is only one piece of leadership in customer service. In this new scheme, some past leaders of eGovernment will find that their service delivery visions and strategies need to evolve beyond an eGovernment-only focus. In past reports, leading governments had been approaching the peak of what they could put online. This year, in the bigger picture of leadership in customer service, even the world leaders have clear room for improvement.

Future leadership will be defined by strength in all areas of customer service.
Beginning with their service delivery strategies, a number of countries are broadening their customer service agenda in ways that will position them for future leadership. Governments are putting the foundations in place for multi-channel, inter-connected government and they are starting to adopt many leading-edge customer service capabilities. The main challenge confronting many of them are the critical building blocks they need, but do not yet have, to move forward toward the next generation of service delivery.

Citizens' willingness to embrace a new generation of services outpaces governments' ability to deliver them.
Citizens want more from government, in terms of cross-governmental collaboration and outreach. In fact, most are willing to make available a wide range of personal data to receive better service. Despite this willingness, governments are not yet ready to match their enthusiasm with an ability to deliver. Almost without exception, the governments we surveyed are less than 50 percent of the way to a full realization of the components of service citizens clearly value.

Governments are making their service investment decisions without a clear view of the outcomes they effect.
Governments' current measurements of service adoption are haphazard. While some services are measured, others are not, or are measured inconsistently across agencies and departments. This is a serious issue: those governments that take the time to form a clear picture of citizens' channel preferences and usage patterns can significantly expand their ability to generate real value.

We also explored trends in how citizens across 22 countries communicate and interact with their governments, their experiences of cross-government collaboration and information sharing and the triggers and barriers to their future interactions with government:

Effective multi-channel strategies are critical.
The telephone continues to be the predominant means citizens use to communicate with government—even though citizens consistently rank it as the least easy form of interaction. Despite the relative Internet savvy and familiarity with online government in advanced countries, not one country ranked the Internet as the favored method for either contacting the government or receiving communications from the government. These findings make clear the need for a robust multi-channel strategy. The challenge will be getting the channel balance right.

Governments' service delivery to individual citizens is disjointed.
Most citizens interact with the government multiple times in a year. However, the experiences of those who have made contact with the same department or agency more than once are disappointing. In all countries, citizens reported that governments were not able to recall at least some of the details from previous interactions 75 percent of the time. Not surprisingly, citizens' experiences in this regard clearly impact their perceptions of how well government departments work together.

Citizens express willingness to share personal information in return for better service, but the right assurances must exist.
In most countries, citizens tend to be reasonably comfortable with all aspects of data sharing, although significant differences in comfort levels do exist between countries, particularly with regards to certain types of information. Privacy issues are the main concern in relation to data sharing. To build greater trust, governments must institute and communicate strong security polices to build confidence in the way they will use this information.