If public service providers are to more consistently deliver on the promise of balancing equality and flexibility, they must strive to become better informed about what the people they serve want and need. Then they must put in place differentiated services and service delivery mechanisms that are responsive, connected and aligned to those wants and needs.
Value-based segmentation Value-based customer segmentation has now become much more common in the private sector; governments, too, need to understand their “customers” by undertaking detailed, needs-based, customer segmentation studies, recognizing that these needs will vary across different customer segments and, indeed, individual customers. Then, they must respond by targeting services—and therefore resources—appropriately, ensuring that those who have the greatest need receive the most help and those who are most able to help themselves have the opportunities and means to do so.
These actions will enable governments to more effectively balance the desirability of offering people choices and personalized services on the one hand, and the necessity of achieving more equal and universal social outcomes cost-effectively on the other.
Customer insight and segmentation can be used to target greater customer service resources at those most in need, or most at risk, such as those at risk of under claiming on their benefit entitlement, or of being out of compliance with regulations or of being socially excluded. Customer segmentation also allows governments to consider adopting a lighter-touch, self-service model—using electronic channels, for instance—for people whom they have identified as being less needy or less at risk. The cost savings can then be used to maintain a more supportive customer service model—mainly face-to-face and phone contact—for those with greater needs.
Differentiated serviceman example of a service that especially supports citizens in need is the "Online Life Coach" under development at Accenture. As described by David McCurley, director of the Accenture Human Services industry group, the online life coach provides a valuable resource to human services agencies and their constituencies. "The idea of the 'life coach' is to assist a person or a family that has been through some sort of life-altering circumstances—the loss of a job, perhaps, or a home fire or death of the family's primary breadwinner. The online life coach takes the specific information provided by these people or families and walks them through various alternatives, resources and ideas they can be thinking about."
Depending on a person's short-term and long-term goals, the online life coach provides advice about reaching those goals and points the person toward resources in support of good outcomes. So a person who has recently become unemployed, for example, receives guidance about job opportunities, retraining, child care requirements, public transportation and so forth.
Another example of differentiated services enabled by better customer segmentation comes from the Ministry of Labor and Citizens’ Services in the province of British Columbia, Canada. The ministry, in partnership with the Ministry of Attorney General, recently conducted extensive, needs-based segmentation in its large and growing new immigrant population to understand better and respond to that group’s range of needs. Then it worked extensively with immigrant advocates and community groups to develop the Welcome BC portal (www.welcomebc.ca). This portal is organized by broad customer segments (temporary workers, international students and so on) according to specific needs (for instance, Choose BC, Come to BC, Settle in BC, Enjoy BC, and Diversity in BC and Regions in BC) and offers services in several languages.