Governments take to customer relationship management solutions to enhance constituent relations

Driven by the need to improve its management of constituent relationships, a new report from Datamonitor, “CRM and the Move to Constituent-Centric Government”, predicts that government spending on customer relationship management (CRM) technology solutions in the US, UK, Germany and France will grow from $2.9 billion in 2008 to $4.4 billion in 2013. In today’s commercially-oriented world, it has become a trend among public sector agencies to treat constituents as customers who expect top levels of service.

“The operating environment for public sector agencies is characterized by the need to ‘do more with less’. As governments strive to provide more personalized public services, they are looking to CRM solutions, which can help align service delivery with constituent needs and address numerous pain points,” says Ben Madgett, Public Sector Technology Analyst at Datamonitor and the report’s author.
 
Traditional CRM functions have unique uses in government agencies
 
CRM was initially used as a solution for private sector companies to better manage their sales, service and marketing channels. With public sector adoption of CRM, however, governments are using these features to meet their own unique needs. For example, CRM’s service function facilitates the provision of information to constituents. One of the key drivers is the surge in government contact centers for constituent inquiries, such as the numerous non-emergency contact center initiatives which have been rolled out across North America and Europe.
 
CRM allows governments to enhance and personalize service delivery for constituents
 
In today’s world, agencies are faced with the task of managing relationships with a diverse mix of constituents, whether it is providing top quality services, giving agency employees the tools they need to do their job well or attracting and retaining citizens and businesses. CRM helps manage all these relationships by making interactions more personalized and efficient. “Governments are able to automate workflow and consistently track cases as they move through the system, agency to agency, in order to be resolved. For example, social services departments are using case management to improve efficiency and ensure consistency in how they track and record interactions with their clients.”
 
Furthermore, CRM allows governments to inform constituents of relevant services and upcoming events or deadlines which might affect them. For example, sending out a reminder email about tax filing information in advance of the deadline can decrease the number of late filers. Not only does this bode well for revenue collection, it also reduces the costs of chasing after the late-filers. In some cases, innovative governments have taken this a step further, and are experimenting with Web 2.0 in CRM, through constituent surveys and interactive websites. CRM solutions also allow governments to increase efficiencies and reduce costs by tailoring message content for constituents.
 
Operational efficiency and decision-making abilities are significantly improved using CRM
 
In addition to the benefits it provides citizen-facing functions, CRM has a positive impact on improving operations and management decisions. By adopting a CRM strategy, government agencies can achieve a host of benefits when it comes to streamlining its business processes and analytical capabilities. With the increased emphasis on performance management in government agencies, CRM steps up to the plate by allowing government to track the nature of constituents inquiries- ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘where’, ‘when’, and even ‘how’; CRM solutions increasingly support multi-channel communications, including phone, email and in some cases, even text messages.
 
CRM implementation faces inevitable challenges which must be addressed
 
Despite the many obvious benefits to adopting CRM, implementation faces inevitable challenges which must be addressed in order for government to realize the full value of these solutions. The report notes that a key aspect of CRM as a solution is only as good as the agency that implements it. A successful CRM implementation involves buy-in from management and staff, as well as the adoption of constituent-centric business process, with the technology serving as the grand enabler in the equation. “There is still some resistance from an operational and management perspective,” says Madgett. “Government agencies often operate in silos, and sharing information about constituents poses challenges which governments will need to address as they adopt a CRM strategy. 
 
“As customers, we’ve become accustomed to the personalized, 24/7 service we get from the private sector. As constituents of government, that same expectation is still there. As such, governments have realized they’ve had to catch up by jumping on the CRM bandwagon.”

To the report: CRM and the Move to Constituent-Centric Government (Strategic Focus)