ARCHIVED - Literature Review on Service Standards

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1.0 Introduction

The Government of Canada is committed to modernizing government management and improving citizen/client satisfaction with the services it delivers. To this end, the government is moving forward on a number of important initiatives, including the Service Improvement Initiative. A key feature of this Initiative is the requirement for government departments and agencies to establish and to monitor service standards, and use them to manage client expectations as a means to improving client satisfaction.

This document presents a brief literature review of service standards. This chapter begins with a discussion of the role of service standards in the government's efforts to modernize government management and improve citizen/client satisfaction is presented. The chapter concludes with an outline of the material covered in the literature review.

1.1 The Role Of Service Standards

The Government of Canada is working to modernize government management in order to respond to Canadians' changing expectations and priorities. To this end in March 2000, the President of the Treasury Board tabled Results for Canadians: A Management Framework for the Government of Canada.^[1] The Results for Canadiansframework is intended to facilitate the achievement of management excellence by improving management practices and aiming for the highest quality of service to the public. The framework describes the government's four core management commitments to achieve excellence in areas critical to a well-performing public sector, namely, citizen focus, results focus, strong public service values, and responsible spending.

With respect to citizen focus, Results for Canadians stated that government services must respond to the needs of citizens, be easy to find, and be available through the mail, by phone, on the Internet or - where populations warrant - at walk-in centres. Too often in the past, government services were designed from the "inside out"; they reflected the structures of government organizations more than the needs and priorities of citizens.^[2]

One of the government's key means to support the Results for Canadians citizen focus and to modernize government management is the Service Improvement Initiative. This Initiative is intended to achieve significant, quantifiable improvement (of 10%) in citizen/ client satisfaction with services over the next five years^[3]. The Initiative provides departments and agencies a framework for service delivery improvement which adopts a citizen's 'outside-in' perspective, is results-based, and is anchored in clients' own service expectations and improvement priorities.^[4]

The essence of the Service Improvement Initiative is that the continuous and measurable increase in client satisfaction is the most reliable indicator of improvement in service quality and service performance: it is what quality and continuous improvement should now mean, and how they should be primarily, though not exclusively, measured. Leading-edge service organizations in the public sector, like their private sector counterparts, now use a results-based approach to the continuous improvement of client satisfaction, integrated with the annual business planning cycle.^[5]

As illustrated in Figure 1, increased client satisfaction is to be achieved by measuring clients' expectations and priorities for improvement, setting service standards and related service targets linked to these expectations and revising service delivery processes accordingly, monitoring performance against these service standards, and then measuring client satisfaction and expectations again. Establishing and monitoring performance against service standards is a key feature of the Initiative and essential for managing client expectations.^[6] In turn, by meeting or exceeding client expectations, government departments and agencies can be assured of being able to increase client satisfaction as suggested by the results of the Citizens First 1998^[7]and the Citizens First 2000^[8] surveys. Accordingly, continuous improvement would then take place by continuously repeating this process.

Figure 1. Increasing Client Satisfaction Through the Use of Service Standards

 

The Service Improvement Initiative also commits government departments to report within their existing annual Reports on Plans and Priorities/Departmental Performance Reports to Parliament the following: service standards for all key public services; performance against service standards; annual improvements in client satisfaction; and progress toward client satisfaction targets.

The Service Improvement Initiative policy framework commits those departments and agencies, which have significant direct service delivery activities for Canadians, to carry out a number of tasks and steps to improve client satisfaction and to continuously improve. In particular, one such step is to:

• Adopt and publish core service standards for each service channel (e.g., timeliness standards for telephone service, in-person service, electronic service, and mail service) that are linked to clients' expectations.^[9]

As indicated in the Citizens First 2000 report, service standards are used in two main ways:

• to provide staff with performance targets (e.g., "Phone must be answered within three rings")
• to inform clients what to expect (e.g., "Waiting time is less than 10 minutes").^[10]

The Citizens First 2000 report indicated that many organizations have seen performance improve dramatically as a result of implementing a program of service standards. The report suggested that governments make their services more accessible across many delivery channels, but especially the telephone. As well, the report suggested that the five drivers of citizen satisfaction (i.e., timeliness; knowledgeable, competent staff; 'the extra mile/the extra smile' [courtesy, and ensuring that the client has the best possible service experience]; fair treatment; and outcome) be incorporated into every line of government business, and that the drivers for specific programs be determined. Finally, the report also suggested that regular measurement of service drivers and service standards be integrated and staff be given feedback on their performance.^[11]

1.2 Outline Of Literature Review

The focus of this document is to present a brief literature review of service standards and how it may help achieve client satisfaction. In doing so, Consulting and Audit Canada (CAC) undertook an Internet search to gather information relating to service standards and customer satisfaction practices employed by the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. As well, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) provided a number of documents. In addition, a number of sources were reviewed dealing with service standards in the private sector, mainly in the United States. A list of the material is contained in Annex A.

The research that follows is divided into the following sections. Section 2 deals with definitions of service standards and related principles by examining how they are understood by public service organizations in various nations and how they fit in the respective client satisfaction improvement initiative. This is followed, in Section 3, by a review of how service standards should be developed in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada (as reflected in TBS' How-to Guide).

Section 4 deals with issues related to developing service standards, followed by a section dealing with issues related to monitoring performance against service standards. Conclusions are presented in Section 6.

Annex A presents a bibliography of the literature reviewed and Annex B provides detailed examples of service standards in each of the three other countries examined.

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