CRM Public Sector - Global Vision Technology Blog

Governments today are measured by citizen satisfaction. CRM is pervasive throughout government, be it local government and central government as the CRM Public Sector helps target proper resource allocation and management effectively,” says Jonathan Farmer, CRM Services Lead for Asia with Microsoft. “That’s why we also call it ‘xRM’. You are managing resources not necessarily managing customers. In the case of patients, it is patient relationship management. Some government servants have lost their jobs when citizens are not happy with the service they are receiving. Good citizen service delivery is definitely paramount in government today.”

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CRM software revenue in Asia Pacific is remains healthy and is expected to reach a compound annual growth rate of 15.4 per cent through 2012. Some government organisations in Australia and Singapore are going through the CRM Public Sector lifecycle a second or third time; they’ve already adopted some form of CRM initiative and want to enhance or expand the CRM footprint in their enterprises.

“Extending CRM strategies for the public sector internally in service and support centres with customer-centric rewards and incentives, as well as externally through multi-channel service support strategies to the public are important areas of CRM investments,” said Isher Kaila, Director of CRM at Gartner.

Service excellence

Customer Relationship Management applications allow organisations to keep track of their connections with the end consumers of their services. In today’s multichannel service environment keeping track of the details of a case can become extremely complex – a citizen may browse a web site, follow-up by phone and then send a relative on their behalf to a manned service counter.

Following this trail, and being in a position to take action where it is required is important – and can literally be a case of life and death. As a tragic recent example of this, a failure to share case records prevented social workers from detecting abuse whilst they were reviewing the case history of a dysfunctional family, leading to the death of a toddler in the United Kingdom.

“Customer service is of utmost importance and should be embedded into all councils’ priorities. It is no difference really, when comparing my preferred supermarket notifying me when my favourite wine is in stock, or targeting me when I have not purchased any for a while,” said Mark Andrews, Head of Contact Centre Services at Cambridgeshire County Council, which was recently rated as the top public sector call centre in the United Kingdom.

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