Subsites Follow
The Road to Customer Service…
More than one candidate for local elected office has promised to manage local government “like a business”. But those of us in the municipal government trenches know the reality is much different. The absence of competition, a deep-rooted civil service system, and the failure to measure performance combine to make a pure business or businesslike approach difficult if not impossible. Customers – most often our citizens and taxpayers – really have no alternatives to the services local government provides. When a citizen renews a dog license or a mercantile license for example, or submits an application for a development permit, the citizen customer has little choice but to contact a municipal government office and interact with a municipal employee. Citizen customers and taxpayer customers, very frankly, are stuck with their local government service provides.
Part of the problem is that municipal government is not dependent upon the marketplace. Departments and smaller divisions of local government typically do not compete with private enterprise. Taxpayers may be surprised to learn that there is no competitive drive among most municipal workforces to reduce costs and improve services. Municipal budgets are commonly the product of bureaucratic increases or decreases that bear no relationship to performance measurement, service or customer satisfaction. Likewise, in a typical municipal government employees' wages are not based on standards derived from objective thresholds of success or performance. Rather, wages are based upon employees' own notions of what they should earn and their value to the organization.
It is hard to imagine that against this backdrop of the ordinary municipal government, the concept of “Customer Service” can ever grow into a meaningful and real component of the public service delivery system. On the one hand, it may be that forward thinking elected officials, managers and administrators will unleash customer service in conjunction with broader planning efforts. On the other hand, it may be the case that citizen and taxpayer customers will simply demand greater levels of attention to customer service as the result of growing taxes and a perception that local government is getting bigger and should do more. In the latter scenario, customer service will arrive “a day late and a dollar short” for those elected officials, managers and administrators who do not comprehend the importance of customer service and choose, instead, to wait until customer dissatisfaction becomes the basis for change.
The focus of this Customer Service Action Plan is to identify steps the Little Egg Harbor Township Committee and Administration can take to be a part of the forward thinking group mentioned above. Customer service in local government is a familiar concept to thousands of cities, towns and counties across America. We can learn from them and build upon their experiences, their failures, and their successes.
At the heart of this action plan is one straightforward point of fact: We must change in order to be successful.
We must change our values and our vision.
Our mission must support our values and vision.
We must redefine our role as a service provider.
And lastly, we must build positive relationships with customers by assertively establishing goals and strategies.
More...