Dears,
EGovernment and Public Sector CRM adoption, utilization and payback has risen to mainstream acknowledgement and begun to rival many private sector CRM accomplishments. However, unlike the private sector, Government CRM (Citizen Relationship Management or Constituent Relationship Management) comes with requirements, problems and objectives unique to the public sector. Many articles on eGovernment briefly address CRM when referring to aspects such as one-stop government or a multi-channel environment directly or indirectly.
Governments are actively seeking to promote citizen-centric government as well as more effective relationships with business. Increasingly, they are looking to the principles of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), as developed and applied by private enterprise, to achieve their goals. .Interest in CRM in government is relatively new, but it is growing. Governments are taking decided steps to improve their CRM capabilities—investing significantly in initiatives to improve service. However, oftentimes governments struggle to realize the benefits expected from developing modern CRM capabilities. Many still have not been able to bridge the gap between the envisioned impact of CRM and their current experience.
CRM for the government: A square peg?
Several CRM vendors have created software specifically for the government. Despite those efforts, CRM doesn't always mesh perfectly with the public sector. For example, economic development projects are shaped by politics, which are difficult to translate into a CRM process. How do you fit political forces and political discussions into the standard sales cycle? And Technical integration can be tough too,
CRM systems work best when integrated with the back-office systems and many of the government systems are quite old, the technical integration can become very difficult. Moreover, many government agencies are working with extra impediments. Security requirements may be tighter for government. Agencies may require additional encryption or ban the use of hosted or on-demand CRM services. On the other hand, government agencies are beginning to embrace business concepts such as marketing and customer service. So there is some good and bad news together.
A new report from a renowned global consulting firm indicates a global shift in e-government strategies, as countries move from viewing online services merely as cost-reduction tools and regards them more as a way to improve relationships with citizens. The Survey conducted by agency shows 93% of the e-government officials polled ranked improving citizen satisfaction a top priority. Eighty-three percent of respondents cited customer demands for new and better services as a driver, and 77% are attempting to meet government performance targets. Whereas in the past, cost reduction was a primary driver of many e-government projects, this year slightly more than half listed savings as a major motivation.
There are five major themes that define the current state of CRM in the public sector:
1. Government agencies are becoming more comfortable thinking of the people and organizations they serve as their customers and are placing a very strong emphasis on customer service delivery as a major priority for their organization.
2. Agencies have embraced the fundamental principles of CRM, but are struggling to get the building blocks—customer insights, customer offerings, customer interactions, organization performance and networks—solidly in place.
3. The majority of agencies is focusing largely on the technological aspects of CRM and is struggling to reap the expected benefits.
4. While agencies have visions for the service models they would like to adopt, they lack the management and operational skills and experience to be able to do so alone.
5. Many agencies now recognize the value of marketing to drive take-up of channels and services; however, the majority of current marketing efforts are neither targeted nor value driven and, as a result, have little impact.
Creating a CRM Nation
We are fortunate to work in some Public Sector CRM initiatives; one such is for government commerce agency in the MiddleEast. The project requirements are very similar to any of the Private Sector enterprise project except to bring about a governance strategy into CRM and bring about an order within the government enterprise to appreciate and use the CRM.
For any Public Sector CRM project there are 2 key value enablers. The first is the Case Management and second the eGovernment services. The operation of Government departments within a state differs but the common thread is the Service to Corporate and Individual citizen. The Critical success factor for any Public Sector CRM project is to create the gateway for the citizens to get into the government sphere through eservice without many challenges. The second critical success factor is to create a discipline for the government agency to respond to citizen queries and complaint in predefined SLA timings which are automated through CRM workflow and assignment rules for different type of cases created.
Once you have achieved these 2 milestones you have made a difference to that Government department and other initiatives will soon follow the success path without much challenges. There are varieties of CRM services you can implement for government agencies,take for example a State Government Municipality the services could run from 100 to few thousands with inclusion of types of accreditations, certifications, Penalty impositions etc. or take Judicial Department which enforces the civil and criminal penalties against the accused and collaborate with Police and Immigration department to make sure the penalties are imposed all these are tracked in the Case Management module of CRM.
As I mentioned beyond Services Government agencies are also focusing on the Social Marketing initiatives such as Campaigns for variety of Government services – Vaccination, Tax Payments etc. In the near future there could also be Loyalty Points which you may use to deduct for taxes or penalties.
There are lot of room for CRM in Government Agencies and A nation has the potential to become a true CRM Nation and What binds government and citizen is just “ Relationship “
Loving P&C
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