اتخاذ سیستم های خدمات مشتری متمرکز: بررسی دولت های محلی

This study examines the adoption of centralized customer service systems in local governments in the United States. Survey data is used to show the relationship between different factors of E-Government adoption and the implementation of this information technology (IT). The results of this study show that the adoption of a centralized customer service system was related to the form of government that the local government had and being located in a central city. The results also indicated that the sophistication of the local government's website was related to the adoption of a centralized customer service system. The results of this study did not support the claim that larger cities are more likely to be adopters of this type of IT. Other results indicate that only 15% of local governments have adopted this IT. These information systems are well-integrated with existing online communication methods such as email and the internet. The information from this IT is commonly used by local governments for performance management and budget development.

The study of the adoption of Information Technology (IT) in the public sector has a long history in public administration literature (Brudney and Selden, 1995 and Perry and Kraemer, 1979). Many of the early studies have examined adoption of computers in the public sector workplace (Perry and Danziger, 1979 and Perry and Kraemer, 1979). With the commercialization of the internet in the late 1990s, numerous studies examined factors of electronic government or E-Government adoption (Brown, 2007, Moon and Norris, 2005 and West, 2004). This study is in that tradition, but examines centralized customer service systems as one important facet of E-Government adoption. This article applies the literatures on E-Government adoption and technological innovation to determine its impact on the diffusion of customer service information systems. This research examines survey evidence on its adoption in local governments in the United States. The definition of customer service systems used in this study is the non-emergency customer service program that centralizes contacts from the public into one system. Some programs will consolidate existing service phone numbers into a single number (“311” or a specific 7-digit hotline number) while some programs operate with calls placed to any agency phone number. All systems route phone calls and other forms of contact (such as internet and email) from the community into a centralized customer service information system. Essentially, these information systems are able to integrate different departments and centralize customer service requests. The hope of these systems is to break down the silos of information dissemination in public sector organizations. Most of these systems are well integrated with other communication channels such as the internet and email. This technology is one step closer to making public sector organizations more citizen-centric by focusing on citizens' needs rather than what information and services departments provide. In order to examine the adoption of this IT in the public sector organizations this article first examines the existing literature on the adoption of E-Government and technological innovation to determine what the key factors that explain its diffusion are. This is followed by a discussion of a survey results on the adoption of a centralized customer service system in local governments. Several hypotheses are developed and tested to determine what the key factors that explain the adoption of this type of IT in local governments are.

This study used the literatures on the adoption of E-Government and technological innovation to explain the diffusion of centralized customer service systems in local governments. The cross-tabulation results of this study indicated that size was not related to many facets of the implementation of a centralized customer service system in a local government. Size also does not explain the adoption of a centralized customer service system in a local government when modeled in the regression analysis. This finding is surprising since much of the E-Government adoption literature has found evidence for size and its impact on E-Government. The greatest factor that explained this information systems' adoption (according to the Pearson Chi-square statistics) was form-of-government. The factors that explain adoption are having council-manager and mayor-council forms of government, and being located in a central city. Having a positive significant relationship between mayor-council governments and centralized customer service system adoption is also contrary to much of the literature on E-Government adoption. The sophistication of the local government website was also related to this type of information system adoption. The results of this study support some facets of the organizational, locational, and technological elements of the innovation model outlined in Fig. 1. Only about 15% of local governments have adopted this type of IT. However, more than a quarter of non-adopters would consider adopting this technology in the near future. There is a desire to improve customer service despite increased costs with this IT. Many of these information systems are well-integrated with existing technologies such as email and the internet to break down the silos of information dissemination and create a one-stop-shop. There is a substantial use of these systems for performance measurement and budget development. A limitation of this study was the lower response rate to the survey compared to other studies of E-Government adoption. There also are very few perceptual questions using Likert scales ranging from agree to disagree which could provide a greater indication of the intensity of effectiveness of this information system. Future research could conduct another survey and ask the adopters of this IT what their level of satisfaction is and the overall effectiveness of these systems. Finally, this study is limited in the number of predictors used to explain customer service system adoption. This study identified factors commonly found in the technological innovation and E-Government literature, but there are many other possibilities that future work could explore. One possibility is to conduct in-depth case studies of successes and failures of these information systems, since factors examined at the aggregate level many not show up when examining individual governments.