Public sector focus on customer satisfaction can increase growth

LAHORE: Private sector is making frantic efforts to make their customer’s experience as pleasant as possible, and some experts say if government departments adopted the same measures, growth target, revenue targets, including tax compliance can increase manifolds.

The government agencies usually operate a monopoly on the services or products they provide; hence they do not lose anything even if they serve badly.

It is also a fact that the private sector beats the public sector in growth. The disruptive technologies have forced even the best performing companies to come up to the expectation of the customers that are now equipped with technology.

The customer-experience concept seems far removed from the public sector agencies. Public departments are not threatened by losing customers.

They are not even challenged by disruptive start ups. Still, it is imperative for any ruling party to ensure that the citizens are served respectfully and prudently as they are their electorate.

The government agencies cannot achieve their budgetary and growth target unless they serve their customers in the same manner as the private sector serves its customers.

Health outcomes will remain below target or may even deteriorate if the patients are not served fairly.

Achieving student enrolment will remain a dream if the teachers do not impart proper education. Tourism department will look to government grants if the staffs fail to help the tourists. The revenue department cannot achieve targets if it harasses genuine taxpayers.

Private sector focuses on identifying, understanding, and mastering the customer journey. Public sector usually misses the citizen’s end-to-end experience. Therefore, in public sector improving citizen experiences requires more rigorous efforts.

By improving the citizen satisfaction, government agencies can gain citizen loyalty. Tax collection will immensely increase if citizens are facilitated and encouraged in filing tax returns without the fear of being harassed because of filing returns.

Currently, they prefer to part with more than their due taxes by paying bribes. This is because they fear undue harassment if they officially filed tax returns.

Successive governments have been investing heavily to improve the service of government agencies. Research however shows that improvements to citizen experience are not linked to high operating expenditures or large capital investment.

In fact, the technology has reduced the need of human capital if it is applied systematically. It may even reduce cost.

Better feedback from the citizen also improves employee engagement in the organisation. Even those employees that were under performing are encouraged to improve their work. This creates a citizen centric culture. At the moment most of the public sector entities lack this culture.

Improving customer or citizen experience is a continuous process. As the aspiration of customers soar, so does the responsibility of companies and public agencies.

The private sector keeps improving the customers’ experience, but the government agencies usually stop after achieving a certain goal. Government agencies would have to learn from the private sector.

In Pakistan there is a long way to cover as mastering the concept and execution of an exceptionally good citizen experience is a challenge. By focusing on the citizen’s overall journey and scientifically applying lessons learned from other customer-experience leaders, public entities can gain significant ground in the satisfaction of the citizens they serve.