PresentersNixon Mageka Gecheo C51/68726

Customer-Driven Government

what entails a customer driven-government

Successful organizations have one common central focus CUSTOMERS It doesn't matter if it's a business, a hospital, a university or, yes, even a government agency.

The goal of Customer-Driven Government is to focus on how government should work, how to reduce waste, eliminate obsolete functions, improveservices to taxpayers and to create a smaller but more productive government

Key themes of customer driven government

Putting Customers First— listen to them, restructure basic operations to meet their needs, and use competition and choices for customers to create incentives for success.

Cutting Red Tape— shift from a system based on accountability for following rules to one where employees are accountable for achieving results.

Empowering Employees To Get Results— decentralize authority and empower those who work on the front lines to make more of their own decisions and solve more of their own problems.

Cutting Back To Basics— abandon the obsolete, eliminate duplication and end special privileges..

Ways of enforcing customer driven government

Getting close to the customer – all management experts, from Tom Peters and Robert Waterman (1980) to Peter Ferdinand Drucker (1909 -2005) and William Edwards Deming (1900 –1993) dwell on the importance of listening to one’s customers. They counsel managers to expose their employees directly to their customers.

Citizen engagement- In order to improve citizen engagement, the Service must endeavor to ensure effective organizational performance. This will in turn lead to increased level of public trust and confidence.This ultimately leads to improved customer and employee satisfaction. The government introduced the surveys as a way to get feedback on customers satisfactions and how the government can best tailor its products and service for customers

objective of the customer satisafaction survey

Gaining feedback from customers and determining overall customer satisfaction of the services and support offered by the MDA’s

Improving on the quality of services offered by the MDA’s Supporting effectiveness and sustainability of the MDA’s

Service Charter Encouraging customer supportive policies and strategies in

MDA’s Providing short and long term recommendations for service

delivery to the customers Providing an analytical situational analysis of customer

satisfaction

The Total Quality Methods(TQM)

William Edwards Deming (1900 –1993) urges organisation to constantly ask their customers what they want, then to shape their entire services and production process to produce it. In effect TQM say that the customer is the most imporatnt people for an organisation ; those who serve customers direct are next; then management are there to serve those who server customers. Organisations and government should constantly ask themselve; How does this add value to customers? Total Quality Management stresses the constant measurement and improvement of quality.

Putting customer in the drivers seat

Customer –driven system force service providers to be accountable to their customers

Customer driven system depoliticised the choice –of –provider decision

Customer –driven system stimulate more innovation

Customer –driven system waste less because they match supply to demand

Putting customer in the drivers seat cont..

Customer –driven system give people choices between different kind of service

Customer –driven system empowers customers to make choises and empowered customers are more committed customers.

Customer –driven system create greater opportunities for equity

Turning agency driven government on its head

Customers should have the independance of knowing exactly where to go for information about the quality and availability of variuos services, and they could choose the service they preferred. All the service providers would have to compete for customers by making their service of the highest quality. This type of shift requires full backing of the leadership. Continuity in leadership is critical in transforming public systems.

User friendliness, transparency and holism

According to Power and his collegues belived a customer- driven system should be “use friendly”customer” should not be faced with a confusing maze of fragmented programs, conflicting eligibility requirements and multiple forms to fill

They also believe it should be transparent, customers should be able to sort through their options without having to sort through the complex bureaucracy behind them.

Customer driven system also allow individuals to meet their needs in a holistic way. They can get several service from one roof.

Ways government can listen to customers

Customer surveyCustomer followupCustomer contacts Email systemOmbudsmanSuggestion boxes or forms

 

Limitations of customer –driven govt.

It cannot be applied to the regulatory sector. This approach is best applied to service delivery.

The other drawback is that it cannot be applied when market is dominated by a monopoly situation, and when competition for a service would result in inefficiency, as is the case with garbage collection routes.

Governments need to restructure the existing bureaucracy. Bureaucracy should be transformed from the old systems to new systems that are both "user-friendly" and "transparent.”

Conclusion

The process of creating a customer-driven organization can be disruptive and very stressful to the employees of an organization

It is also a time consuming process. The changes needed will not happen over night.

The benefits yielded are: open and flowing lines of communication; a culture change to one of unity, teamwork, and commitment to collective goals; continuous dialogue about problems and solutions for solving them from all employees not just those in positions of authority; and a willingness to take risks to make the organization work better and more effectively.