Workforce Management Featured Article
Government Agencies Should Strive for Quality Customer Service
Is the business world the only place where customer service matters? Sometimes it feels that way. There’s definitely an incentive for businesses to treat customers with care:continued business. When customers are treated with exceptional service, they tend to form long term relationships with businesses and refer friends and family, ultimately forming a strong foundation for the future.
But what about organizations that people have no choice in dealing with, such as government agencies? For decades, citizens of America have complained about the lack of care and attention from post offices, the DMV, and even the IRS. It seems that these organizations feel they can skirt around quality service due to the simple fact that citizens have no alternatives for their objectives. This fact has generated a somewhat vicious cycle among government employees and everyday citizens, where government workers expect unhappy customers and customers expect low quality service.
Republican Arkansas Senator John Boozman recently published an opinion piece highlighting some of the poor practices of the IRS, which can be broadly applied to other areas of government service. Boozman points out that taxpayers have a right to expect decent service, as many of these requests deal with serious financial or legal matters that require immediate attention. Not to mention, these citizens are the very people that fund these agencies to begin with, which entitles them to a certain level of care.
Government agencies should adapt to the evolving customer demands the same way that businesses have over the last decade. The abundance of CX resources and automated tools on the market has made it possible to create massive improvements to common tasks and general inquiries. There's simply no longer an excuse for poor public service, as it can easily be improved with modern technology.
If the public is forced to support the various government institutions that keep our nation running, they deserve, at a minimum, decent and respectable service without hassle.
Edited by Maurice Nagle
