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| Taking Care of Business |
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Taking Care of Business
Institute for Citizen-Centred Service | 2004
Full Report ($30 CDN) |
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Summary Report ($15 CDN) |
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Executive Summary
A collaborative effort between more than 20 public-sector organizations from across Canada, Taking Care of Business is a landmark study that, for the first time, explores Government-to-Business service delivery from the perspective of the business community.
In recent years, governments across Canada have spent a significant amount of time improving service delivery to businesses. Information and services have been brought together making it less complicated to start a business, forms and processes have been made available electronically making it easier and less costly to access government services, and the vast array of regulations has been reviewed and rationalized lessening the burden on businesses while still protecting the public interest. Most impressively, these initiatives have often been accomplished in a collaborative manner across multiple levels of government through projects such as the network of Canada Business Service Centres.
While these initiatives have often been undertaken in consultation with the business community, the public sector has lacked an instrument through which it can hear directly from businesses about their experiences, expectations, and priorities for service improvement. What is the current level of service quality to businesses? What service channels are preferred by businesses when using government services? What are the drivers of service quality for businesses? How does government's role as a regulator of business change the service relationship? Where should governments focus their service improvement initiatives?
Based on a representative sample of almost 6,000 Canadian businesses in every province and territory, Taking Care of Business represents the latest collaborative effort to improve service to the business community, giving public-sector service managers across Canada a road map to service improvement.
- When rating the quality of services, businesses have a similar pattern of opinions to citizens, giving some services very high marks and rating others (such as regulatory services) less favorably.. The original Citizens First study discovered that service quality ratings across public and private sector services are comparable. Some services such as public libraries and supermarkets received very high scores while others including road maintenance and banks received lower scores. The results from Taking Care of Business suggest a similar pattern where (not surprisingly) regulatory or compliance-based services such as taxes related to importing and exporting receive relatively lower scores. Despite the fact that a large number of public-sector services to businesses are regulatory in nature, the average overall service quality score (3.41) is almost identical to the average service quality score given by citizens in the original Citizens First study (3.40 for federal and 3.48 for provincial/territorial/ municipal services).
- Ratings of service quality between businesses and citizens may be similar; however, there are fundamental differences in the way businesses interact with government, suggesting the need for different service improvement strategies. With respect to the use of government services, businesses appeared to have considerably more regular interactions with governments than citizens. Furthermore, while there was great variety in the types of services accessed, a significantly larger proportion of businesses used compliance-based services than did citizens. Government service managers have to recognize that businesses represent a unique target audience for government services, and not just because they look different from citizens. Given their frequent and widespread use of government services, businesses are clearly a high priority for government service improvement.
- Governments can improve access to public services by giving businesses the information they need to obtain the service, and by facilitating access across multiple channels. When businesses had all the information they needed to obtain a service their satisfaction with the accessibility of that service was considerably higher. In fact, in some cases, the importance of knowing what is needed to obtain a service actually leads a considerable proportion of businesses to use intermediaries as a way to interact with governments.
Beyond knowledge of how to obtain the service, the channel used also affects satisfaction with access. The choice of channel is not random, however, but is tied to the context of the service experience. Since businesses are usually using more than one channel to access a service (73% of service interactions involve more than one channel), it is clear that government service strategies must continue to incorporate all channels, and must seek to create a seamless service environment where businesses can move between preferred channels and across levels of government with ease.
- Service improvement strategies should focus largely around five themes: communication of information; minimizing burden; providing timely service; ensuring fair treatment; and achieving the desired outcome when possible.In searching for the factors that determine or drive the perception of service quality for businesses, Taking Care of Business discovered that these five themes were important in varying degrees by service type across a wide range of services. In fact, performing well in all areas can mean the difference between a service quality score of 4 out of 5 vs. one of 2.5 out of 5 when performance in all areas is low.
It is important, however, for service managers to determine which of these themes are relevant to their particular service and which other service elements might serve as drivers of service quality for their particular clients. In fact, it is possible to identify very specific drivers of service quality within the context of a specific service. Therefore, public service managers are encouraged to conduct their own follow-on research studies to better understand the drivers within their own service context.
- Businesses will also benefit if governments can coordinate timely service delivery across channels and across organizational boundaries for more complex services. In addition to focusing on the key drivers, service improvement strategies should be focused around managing and meeting expectations with regard to timeliness, directing businesses to the appropriate channels, and ensuring greater coordination between levels of government, between departments and between channels.
- By improving service quality, governments can also improve the underlying attitudes of businesses toward government service. Service quality matters and not just to those businesses that use specific government services. Improvements in service quality can lead to direct, tangible improvements in the attitudes and opinions that the business community holds about government services. In fact, the results from Taking Care of Business suggest that a 10% increase in service quality can actually improve the perceived value of government service (e.g. satisfaction, value for tax dollars) by as much as 7%, and improve the underlying attitudes of businesses toward government service by as much as 5%. Likewise, the direct link can work against governments. If service quality falters, so too will business attitudes and opinions about government services.
Taken together, the findings from Taking Care of Business provide municipal, provincial, territorial, and federal managers who deliver services to business a clearer understanding about the service needs of the business community in Canada, and a road map for working collaboratively to improve government services to business. Moreover, by focusing on the drivers of service quality, improving the timeliness of service, and coordinating service delivery across channels and across levels of government, public sector managers can not only expect to see higher service quality ratings from businesses in the years to come, but can also contribute to improving the underlying attitudes of the business community with respect to government services.
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