Closer to the Customer? Local Government and International Experience
| Published date | 01 December 1996 |
| Author | Stephanie Snape,John Fenwick |
| Date | 01 December 1996 |
| DOI | 10.1177/095207679601100403 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Closer to the Customer? Local Government and
International Experience
John Fenwick and Stephanie Snape
University of Northumbria
Introduction
A &dquo;consumer orientation&dquo; has become a familiar part of the vocabulary of local
authority management in the UK (Gyford 1991; 1993). The attempt to bring the
process of managing services closer to the public may be known by various
names - a Public Service Orientation; a closeness to the customer; an enabling
authority and so on - and has given rise to a host of initiatives including
consumer surveys, the collection of indicators of public satisfaction, and a more
rigorous approach to the management of complaints (LGMB 1992). Less
directly, the requirement to collect and publish standard performance measures
for individual services imposes upon local councils a regime where the
perception of performance has to be taken seriously (Audit Commission 1995).
The growth of local authority Citizen’s Charters (Prior 1995), and related
developments such as the Patient’s Charter in the NHS, add to the officially
preferred images of listening to the public and taking account of user opinion.
Such consumer initiatives continue to be open to a number of interpretations.
Stewart for instance argues that a focus upon consumerism alone may neglect
citizenship as a necessary element in the empowerment of the public (1994). It
has also been argued that the concern with the consumer may be, in practice,
more &dquo;rhetoric&dquo; than &dquo;reality&dquo; in public management (Harrow and Shaw, 1992,
p.115).
Drawing from current research’, the present paper seeks to assess whether a
consumer-based reorientation of local public management can be detected
internationally, and, if so, what this means. If UK experience is atypical, it
perhaps becomes easier to see the ’customer’ approach in UK local government
as something ideologically led, closely linked to the political priorities of
successive Conservative governments, but not necessarily important. If compar-
ative study suggests, however, a more widespread adoption of consumer
approaches, with common elements in different societies, then much more may
be learned about a general restructuring of public service delivery.
The growth of consumerism may be linked to an overall restructuring of the
45
local state in several ways. Privatisation programmes have challenged both
’bureaucratic’ and ’professional’ control over the distribution of welfare (Clarke
and Langan, 1993, p.67). In this sense, consumer orientation is an obvious
alternative to producer orientation. The growth of charging for local services has
provided another site for restructuring along market lines, by changing service
users into customers. A renewed emphasis upon the management of public
services has represented a further form of restructuring, in this case empowering
a new generation of managers who were themselves newly attuned to their
’customers’ (Clarke and Langan, 1993, p.68).
Certainly, different countries face a common agenda of falling tax revenues,
of a ’dependent’ population growing in relation to the population in full-time
paid employment, and of the intemationalisation of regulation and fiscal policy.
What can be said then of the consumer orientation in this international context:
must it too be regarded as an inevitable element of restructuring? To answer this
question, it is necessary to look first at differing strands within consumerism.
Elements of a Customer Orientation
(1 ) Collecting consumer data to inform management decisions
A consumer orientation may involve the direct polling of citizens’ views by the
local authority, for instance by using social survey methods to obtain ratings of
public satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Consumer surveys in UK local
government have tended, perhaps inevitably, to produce rather over-general,
broadly positive, but not always particularly useful results (Fenwick, 1995, p.57).
There are obvious problems of deciding which ’public’ to listen to - which
specific group of users - and how then to act upon the findings. The latter is a
particular problem when expressed ’consumer opinion’ differs from the policy
priorities of elected councillors.
UK authorities have not been alone in collecting consumer data to inform
management decisions. Some authorities in the Netherlands have been experi-
menting with this form of consumerism. In 1988 Delft municipality set up a
’Citypanel’ of 1,000 households, who are interviewed annually to provide
opinion on the municipal services (Snape, 1994, pp.44-45). Consumer
information is used to draw up indicators in order to evaluate the performance of
service divisions. However, the Citypanel initiative was originally opposed by
some councillors because they viewed it as usurping their representative role.
Another municipality, Tilburg, declined to adopt such an approach for this very
reason.
Turkish authorities have collected ’consumer opinion’ in a more direct
way:
In the Municipality of Bakirkoy, Turkey, the Mayor organises a &dquo;review day&dquo; once
every week. The meeting is a kind of public hearing to review administrative
decisions and special cases which have not satisfied the public. About 70 citizens
come to each hearing. They explain their case, demand or complain to the Mayor,
who acts as an intermediary between the citizen and the administration. Directors
from the municipal administration are present. They comment on the case and defend
46
the decision and actions of their units. A final decision is made by the Mayor.
(OECD, 1987, p.54).
Further examples of consumer research, through survey and other methods,
can be identified. There is little reason, however, to suppose that such research
affects the relationship between local council and local public in any important
sense. This development represents merely the transfer of market research
techniques to a public service context. Nonetheless, such methods increasingly
form a part of the contractual arrangements under which public services are
delivered, rather than being an optional ’extra’. Within the NHS, for instance,
obtaining a pre-defined percentage public satisfaction rating may be part of the
formal conditions of the purchaser-provider contract. To some extent this is the
future for local government too, so long as contractual relationships in a compet-
itive environment remain the typical form of organisation.
(2) One Stop Shops
A second aspect of a customer orientation, viewed internationally, has been the
growth of ’one stop shops’ ie simplified ’shop windows’ for the range of local
authority services. In the UK, there has been a trend since the late 1970s toward
single-service neighbourhood offices, served by patch teams, especially in Social
Services and Housing. A more recent development has been the creation of one-
stop offices providing access to a wider range of local council services. North
Tyneside metropolitan authority maintains a number of ’Customer Service
Centres’ throughout the borough (North Tyneside Council,...
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