May 28, 2009
One of the stimuli for doing this research with academic rigour was the breadth of reading required. To date, I’ve dipped my feet in philosophy, politics, computer science, management, social policy, social work and many other areas!
Somehow I came across a two-year project from a few years ago at the OU entitled ‘Creating Citizen-Consumers: Changing Relationships and Identifications’, and now I’m in the middle of reading, courtesy of York University library – Creating Citizen-Consumers by Clarke, Newman, Smith, Vidler & Westmarland, SAGE, 2007. It’s not an easy read, full of Foucault and Giddens but I can see light and that includes research that indicates that the users of public services don’t identify themselves as ‘customers’.
If anyone wants to read some of these arguments against the commodification of public services put forward in leaflet form, Catalyst have kindly provided Catherine Needham’s 2003 leaflet ‘Citizen Consumers, New Labour’s marketplace democracy‘ as a free download.
The issue to me now, is how we dig ourselves out of this mess!
*********************************************************************
If you are interested and, preferably, in UK local government please complete the survey, it doesn’t take long at all. I’ll keep feeding back through these pages, which are also covered by localgov.co.uk and PSF.
*********************************************************************
Leave a Comment » | 
citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: catalyst, catherine needham, citizen-consumers, elizabeth vidler, janet newman, john clarke, louise westmarland, nick smith | 
Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
May 25, 2009
I’ve mentioned Professor Bob Johnston before but it appears he’s also a favourite of the Institute of Customer Service. Based upon his research they’ve published some brief guidance upon how to best manage them. They’ve also published various reports commissioned by them from researchers such as Bob.
There are some words of wisdom such as:
“A complaint is a gift and you should consider yourself lucky that a customer is prepared to give up valuable time to help you improve your organisation.”
“One can learn so much about problems with internal processes, training, specific employees/managers, and product – free”
“Do you have a continuous culture? Do you check customer (and employee) satisfaction regularly?”
There’s also a comment here from Vicky Sargent who does much work on the web metrics side of Socitm - she’s seen councils where monitoring feedback makes a difference to their services!
Leave a Comment » | Metrics, customer satisfaction, engagement | Tagged: Bob Johnston, govmetric, Institute of Customer Service, Socitm, Vicky Sargent | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
May 21, 2009
The IDeA have published a four page NI14 update IDeA May 2009 on their Community of Practice web site on the one around National Indicator 14.
The reason for the publication is that the closing date for submission from councils was 30th April 2009 and 350 have apparently submitted. As they are kind enough to highlight the Audit Commission has advised that NI14 is a non-comparable indicator i.e. not a TARGET.
They also state that “The IDeA will continue to gather evidence of both improvements to customer experience and efficiency savings resulting from NI14 data being used as a lever for service improvement and capacity building.”
I’m also examining the use that’s being made of NI14 in my own survey, but also looking at other options.
Leave a Comment » | Metrics, NI 14, NI14, transformational change | Tagged: IDeA, NI14 | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
May 20, 2009
The Central Office of Information has issued guidance on web metrics and costs although I’m not aware of comparative or equivalent ones for other channels, although there is the Contact Centre guidance, but nothing relating to comparative channels and channel migration.
One of these days…
However, a student at dear old Harvard has some propositionsfor us on the Complexity and Social Network blog there.
Leave a Comment » | Metrics, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement | Tagged: Central Office of Information, COI, Complexity and Social Network blog, costs, guidance, Harvard | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
May 17, 2009
Chris Kendall, the Director of the Planning Portal, runs a WordPress blog. A recent post was ‘What makes a good LPA web site?‘, LPA being Local Planning Authority. He’s received a certain amount of feedback that I’ll be circulating amongst colleagues in the belief that disseminating good practice is a good practice.
I’m also posting it here for, hopefully, further dissemination.
Leave a Comment » | Metrics, Systems thinking, e-government, engagement | Tagged: Chris Kendall, planning, Planning portal | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
May 14, 2009
The latest Vanguard News – May 2009 contains a link to a report in the Economist of 10 May 2009 about the failure of performance targets and comments that “It is good on the problems but not so good on what we should measure”. The Economist report is actually based upon an academic study (Ordonez et al, 2009, Academy of Management Perspectives) that has been reproduced in a number of places, including this one at the Wharton Business School.
Perhaps until we come up with an answer for this perennial issue that government will swallow, we will be plagued with targets? I think they have to take trust onboard and witness successful lean change for themselves…
The matter of targets was also jumped on by the editorial in the current edition of ‘Public Sector Executive’ (March/April 2009) under the title ‘Death by a thousand targets’, so we are not alone.
*********************************************************************
If you are interested and, preferably, in UK local government please complete the survey, it doesn’t take long at all. I’ll keep feeding back through these pages, which are also covered by localgov.co.uk and PSF.
*********************************************************************
1 Comment | Metrics, Systems thinking, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: Economist, Ordonez et al, Vanguard, Wharton | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
May 12, 2009
On my drive home from work I identified a group of workmen breaking branches of a tree. In beautiful, rural North Yorkshire this is not considered good practice, especially by this experience nature reserve manager (part-time).
It was along a stretch of major road, so I initially informed the District arboriculturalist who was sympathetic but not sure who was responsible. I had also informed the County Council ecology unit (no response) and the County Councillor with Executive responsibilities for the environment, who passed my complaint onto the Highways Agency.
It was at this point I discovered ‘How to complain’. I posted a complaint through the site to the Highways Agency and within a few days had a phone message asking me to telephone the contractor responsible.
A phone call later and I was onto the manager responsible who understood the reason for my complaint and is, I hope, investigating. Lets hope the contractors change their practices, too!
If you’ve read my post about US Airways, the good news is they’ve apologised! Lets hope the service improves the next time I can afford a trip away!
*********************************************************************
If you are interested and, preferably, in UK local government please complete the survey, it doesn’t take long at all. I’ll keep feeding back through these pages, which are also covered by localgov.co.uk and PSF.
*********************************************************************
Leave a Comment » | Systems thinking, citizen, customer satisfaction, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: highways agency, howtocomplain.com, trees | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
May 10, 2009
The website localgov.co.uk, the online version of the Municipal Journal, had the headline on 7 May 2009 that ‘Less than half happy with council services’, which was a report about figures compiled by Ipsos MORI from the Place survey data required to be collected by local authorities.
Ben Page of Ipsos MORI blames this drop in public satisfaction on poor communication and increases in Council Tax. I think the Place survey is a waste of money and meaningless. If a local authority employs the strategy proposed by Ben Page and communicates good messages before its survey, it’ll get improved results!
Lets better employ the money by continually measuring satisfaction with services and channels and using it to improve the delivery of services!
*********************************************************************
If you are interested and, preferably, in UK local government please complete the survey, it doesn’t take long at all. I’ll keep feeding back through these pages, which are also covered by localgov.co.uk and PSF.
*********************************************************************
1 Comment | Metrics, Systems thinking, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: Ben Page, Ipsos MORI, Place survey | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
May 6, 2009
My thanks go to Ian (Cuddles) Cuddy at Public Sector Forums, who on the same day he’d discovered the news, informed me about the publication on Chorley Council’s web site of the final documents to come out of all their work on ‘circles of need’.
It must be a year since I mentioned the original introductory report that had been done. The latest documents fill out a lot of the detail and learning since the original proposal. Bravely, on page 34 there is an admission that: “If published, such a model would be too complex to be useful and by saying everything says nothing. “ So they decided to focus on the strongest links. Well done!
Importantly from this person’s view there is an even braver admission: “There is plenty of evidence from Local Authorities that customers are cheaper to server if they are migrated to cheaper channels such as the telephone or the Internet, but there is no way of knowing if these customers in the longer term are ‘cheaper to serve’.” On this basis, the project has developed a ‘cost to access’ formula, and a ‘customer satisfaction tool’ (an eleven question survey).
Incidentally, there is also the output from Chorley et al’s work on a Business Process Architecture , which is mentioned in the report.
Leave a Comment » | Metrics, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: Chorley, circles of need, Public Sector Forums | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
May 4, 2009
Its two weeks since the launch of the annual survey (well, this is the second one), and having harrassed a large number of colleagues to complete it, despite it being far from statistically significant, I thought I’d give some brief impression of what it might indicate.
In general, channel usage and recording is very similar to the 2008 study, with Digital TV still being much ignored. Recording of channel usage is also still thin on the ground, although between a half and two thirds do record most channels.
The surprise for me was the little attention being paid to the intent behind National Indicator 14, which I thought would get all channels measured but those doing it have focused on the face-to-face and telephone with the email, Internet and e-forms lagging quite a lot! Similarly the list of services is mixed between all of them, the CLG list and a locally agreed list, but, most surprisingly to me, only two thirds are doing anything with the data, and even then what happens is pretty sporadic!
Satisfaction remains as popular a measure as 2008 with people meauring it through a variety of means.
If you are interested and, preferably, in UK local government please complete the survey, it doesn’t take long at all. I’ll keep feeding back through these pages, which are also covered by localgov.co.uk and PSF.
Leave a Comment » | Metrics, NI 14, NI14, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement | Tagged: survey | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
