Customer satisfaction is endogenous and very much a function of what customers expect and is often based on what was delivered in the past. I wonder if the authors have thought about expectations management as a precursor to customer satisfaction and what would drive the management of expectations? I fear that the only exogenous variable would be some estimation of “importance” or “value” and one would not be able to get around confronting that “beast” given the endogenous nature of customer satisfaction.

I applaud the agency profiled here for taking actions which directly impact the customer. The fact that someone in the organization’s management looked to tie their actions into some metric that would translate into customer-visible results (one expression of value) is something we need more of. Most of the time, similar organizations would look to various types of process improvement initiatives to obtain “benefits,” without a full understanding of how it helps or impacts the customer. I think this example demonstrates and helps reinforce our assertions that a customer-centric perspective is applicable and valuable, regardless of organizational type—public, private or not-for-profit.

The issue is not technical but cultural. Most government offices—federal, state, municipality—are less than efficient, as there is ‘no carrot and no stick’. Employees have no incentive to do well, and no penalty if they are not efficient. Deal with any government agency, anywhere and you will see the truth of this cultural attitude. Of course since most are monopolies, the ‘citizens’ have to suffer in silence.

Since this project involves “a US federal agency”, there are no confidentiality issues involved. The agency should be identified. We can then (1) patronize them since they have demonstrated an effort towards process improvement; and (2) judge for ourselves whether our collective individual experience matches the assertions of the authors.

I suggest that there is an unresolved tension in this model. When you are a public sector organisation you are very commonly responsible for rationing goods and services—and the goods or service will be free of charge or priced at a significant discount (courtesy of the taxpayer). The demand, consequently, from the citizen can be unlimited, and if those citizens do not get what they see as their ‘right,’ they become much aggrieved. The paradox for the public sector organisation is that if it does its job well and strictly ‘rations’ the good or service according to the agreed criteria (need, entitlement, etc.), the corollary is often a ‘dissatisfied’ customer who is unlikely to give a highly postive rating to the agency they see as having not delivered what they wanted.

Impressive results, but I can’t help but think that there will come a day when all the lean manufacturing and TQM efforts will no longer be able to keep citizens happy through being a centralised information source. This “tragedy of the commons” scenario needs more radical change. Using the science of networks, government agencies should be able to identify reliable information brokers in the community and then follow this up by facilitating diffusion through these network “poles” rather than relying on all citizens coming to the original source (and hence promulgating the problem). Some simple calculations will quickly show that this is a substantially more effective information diffusion model than simply relying on a limited central source.

Interesting take here on citizen “customers.” I’m assuming that your study excludes customers that rely on an agency such as attorneys, consultants, or companies being regulated, among others? In some agencies, these non-citizen customers are often given priority at call centers because bad service works its way back to top management. I was wondering how you actually measured customer satisfaction. Also, some of the calls were resolved in less than a minute so I have wonder whether or not those callers were just referred to the right person in the agency to talk with. I think agency Web sites also play a role in serving citizen customers, however, government Web sites have a reputation for poor usability. Some agencies like FERC actually create a specific channel on the site and go after citizens. I think that as the demographics of citizen customers change, those customers will be looking for more self-serve, Web-based solutions and even forums where they can talk to each other. I’m not certain if government agencies are ready for that but I believe it is just a matter of time.