شهروندان به عنوان مشتریان: بررسی آینده CRM در دولت بریتانیای محلی

Customer relationship management (CRM) is seen as a key element in delivering citizen-centric public services in the UK. However, CRM originated in the private sector as a technology to support customer acquisition, retention and extension (cross-selling). The appropriateness of this technology to organizations striving to meet complex goals such as improving the quality of life for vulnerable people is open to question. This paper uses the results of recent UK electronic government CRM programs to show that the focus for many local authorities has so far been systems integration, CRM-enabling call centers and the provision of routine transactions online. More advanced authorities are planning to use CRM to help them understand their citizens better. But more can be done. To this end, the paper proposes an alternative model of CRM progress which moves beyond transactions and customer insight and encourages citizens to co-produce the public services they consume.

‘Choice’—this small word currently underlies a very large volume of UK government rhetoric. Citizens must be able to choose their schools, hospitals, doctors, social housing and potentially any other service provided from the public purse. The future is of citizens as empowered consumers, able to take their custom away from poor quality providers and move it to the best. Consumers become customers in this world and private sector management approaches are increasingly being seen as appropriate solutions to the problems of bureaucratic providers unable to offer a modern service. One approach that has become popular in the private sector, when confronted by customers able to switch to alternative suppliers with ease, is to provide a consistent service through all customer interactions and to develop deep customer ‘insight’ in order to predict future customer needs and to steer them towards appropriate products and services. This is called Customer relationship management (CRM) and, when it works well, can encourage customer loyalty and the development of long-lasting profitable relationships for the provider. CRM has recently become popular in the UK public sector, especially in local government. Many local authorities are implementing CRM, and the government, seeing CRM as a key e-government ‘enabler’, has funded a number of pilot projects and a National CRM Programme to explore its benefits and to identify and disseminate best practice across authorities. This paper goes in search of Citizen Relationship Management by assessing the outcomes of the recent government-sponsored CRM programs in terms of both the classic private sector model of CRM, and in terms of the potential of CRM to genuinely deliver improved, citizen-centric public services which have a real impact on citizen quality of life.

This paper began with a discussion about the concept of ‘choice’ in public services. This is a big issue in British politics at the moment with the major parties placing choice center stage in their strategies. In terms of e-government, choice has mainly focused on choice of access channel (call center, face-to-face, Web, etc.). But the services behind the access channels appear to remain entrenched in their departmental silos. Private sector CRM best practice suggests that once sufficient customer data have accrued, the CRM system can be used to analyze the data in order to generate insights into customer behaviors and to predict their future needs. This is the territory of the cross-sell and up-sell in commercial language. More enlightened English local authorities are planning to use this technology to help them understand their citizens better: who is entitled to more benefits, who is due a visit from a social worker, who is due to be discharged from hospital and requires re-housing? This degree of insight would undoubtedly represent a considerable advance on the current use of information within local government. But more can be done. Instead of simply following the private sector CRM model, and retaining power and control of the relationship in the hands of the local authority, citizen relationship management could be re-balanced, with power being shared between the service provider and the service consumer. This requires a lot more letting go on behalf of the former and a lot more engagement on behalf of the latter. Whether the transaction-based centralized CRM systems being adopted from the private sector are capable of supporting such a radical change in practice and culture is open to question.