EMPLOYEE WELLBEING
rationalise and consolidate ICT applications down to a single application; reduce to a single database per customer cluster; and utilise or develop CRM functionality within the cluster application.
The results of this are lower cost solution; no duplication of data; customer group intelligence; shorter transactional processes; single view of the customer within the cluster; and enhanced service performance.
An example of clustering working in practice can be seen in the context of the street scene. Here, services such as refuse collection, street light reporting etc. may be branded as ‘neighbourhood information services’ focused around all access channels. It has been developed to provide citizens with easier access to information relevant to their immediate neighbourhood and to improve the methods by which they report local incidents. The system greatly improved the management and tracking of citizen-reported incidents (e.g. fly tipping and passage dumping).
It is imperative to focus on the sectors view of customers: the actual customer and his, her or its characteristics and ideas as well as the opportunity and current issues presented and the barriers to successfully meeting customer wants and needs.
Local authorities are very different from every other type of organisation. The majority of functions that local government performs have been created in isolation from each other with little or no common relationship between them. Local authorities have traditionally been organised in silos: planning, education, social services, environmental health, council tax and so on.
Today, the public sector is a blended mix of in sourced, co-sourced and outsourced
Sep/Oct 10
frameworks with no single entity. It comprises individual and tailored bodies, agencies, trusts, authorities and relationships. Today we live and operate in a public sector world of customer tagged financing, deregulation, privatization and outsourcing. The public sector no longer demonstrates a public service ethos - if one ever did exist. It is now more a collection of individual and tailored bodies, agencies, trusts, authorities and relationships.
Let us take a typical local authority, as an example, and explore the CRM approach taken with the ‘customer’. Often the approach taken is probably wrong and the primary reasons for this are that rarely, if ever, are customer characteristics identified, established and considered.
If they were then a traditional CRM approach would fail in its application and certainly prove to be a very expensive system to implement. Instead it is necessary to consider the idea of ‘intelligence led government’. In essence this would comprise the following key elements:
• Capture all contact: passive or otherwise in single ‘places’.
• Standardisation: one way of doing things.
• Consolidation: reduce channel access points, reduce ICT applications, and be prepared to spend less.
• Contact drives strategy: exploit the contact as a driver for “reduction” in its broadest forms.
Such an approach would not harness ICT capability but the necessity of contact: the ease of data collection and the value of its exploitation. Some of the implications of such a strategy might be:
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Stop spending up to 5% of the total price of refuse contracts
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to speed collection the 0.3% of missed bins each week. Find out why they were missed and stop it happening again. Exploit geodata.
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Hold all benefit and revenue data in a single place (eg. education awards, fairer charging, housing benefit, council tax) and put ‘need together’. Exploit data matching.
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Cross match data with other data sets e.g. single biggest source of benefit fraud is sole person discount (25% of council tax bill if single occupier) so cross match with credit checks.
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’Push out’ demand to manage workflow e.g. annual education awards. Stop waiting for the rush.
• •
Reduce contact not channel switch. It’s simply cheaper. Hold what needs to be held. For example, children at risk, followed by relationships, history, interventions, activity and trends. Forget free school meal history and clothing grants!
An effective CRM system need not be expensive. A system such as that advocated here can help improve service delivery and customer satisfaction. It can achieve this by linking the expertise from backoffice systems essential to a mutually satisfactory service encounter. Such a link speedily presents all the relevant information in a pertinent and helpful manner.
The key message seems to be that we need to be prepared to spend less, think more and dump CRM as stated on the tin. We need to be ‘customer characteristic’ led.
David McElhinney is CEO, Liverpool Direct Ltd
Tony Proctor is professor, Chester Business School, University of Chester
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