Papers

Service Strategy Maturity: A Model for Business Performance

Within the customer engagement research fraternity, there is growing evidence that demonstrates that customer service is a significant driver of both customer advocacy and future purchasing behaviour. Organisations also recognise that improving customer satisfaction / engagement is a significant business challenge alongside other challenges such as increasing productivity.

Despite this growing evidence of the importance of delivering great customer service in driving business performance, organisations remain more focused on Marketing, Human Resource Management, Technology and Finance strategies than Service Strategy.

This Paper sets out the findings of a research programme that tested the hypothesis that organisations with a mature enterprise-wide Service Strategy have higher levels of business performance.

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Why Service Matters for Government

Both academic and market research studies suggest strong links between Government customercentric service delivery, citizen effect and organisational outcomes. Those Government organisations which have adopted a transformational approach (Gartner, 2001) to service delivery utilising contact centre and online channels report to have:

1. Customer Effects including: 
    a) more effective relationships with customers; and 
    b) the potential to provide constituents with a better standard of living. 

2. Organisational Outcomes including:
    a) greater operational efficiencies;
    b) a stronger Government brand reputation; and
    c) a higher potential to influence voters’ preferences.

One of the defining truths underpinning a customer centric approach to service delivery is that Australia citizens want a relationship with Government, they want to be treated as a customer not as a ‘constituent’ or ‘citizen’ and they want this relationship to be facilitated through both good policy and effective service interactions.

This paper presents the case for ‘Why Service Matters’ for the Government sector. The paper will briefly profile the Australian and Government contact centre industry, discuss the customer demand for effective Government phone service, draw on global research supporting the ‘service shift’ in Governments and argue the case for change in service delivery for the Government sectors.

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Service Centre Cultural Change Programme

Culture is simply defined as an organisation or team’s shared beliefs and behaviours related to their work. It is thus important to first understand what has shaped the existing culture prior to developing the new culture.

For the purpose of this Paper, we will suggest that the problem an organisation seeks to overcome is that the culture, or shared beliefs and behaviours of the serivce centre are not aligned to the future goals of the leader(s) or of the overarching corporation.

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