ARCHIVED - Literature Review on Service Standards

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2.0 What are Service Standards

In defining a service standard it is useful to examine what other national public service organizations are doing. For the purposes of this report, the service improvement initiatives of the United States, United Kingdom and Australia were examined. Putting Customers First, the United States program initiated in 1993 by the President, is committed to improving government services to citizens. The goal of the initiative is to make government service standards that match or exceed that of private organizations that provide a comparable service. Strong government leadership has led the initiative, however, it is committed to ensuring a 'balanced' approach involving staff and citizens and demonstrating results.

The current United Kingdom Service First program stems from a Citizen's Charter^[12]released by the Prime Minister in 1991. The Charter provided a framework to help public sector organizations to provide the highest standard of government services. The current Service First program is committed to setting clear standards of service, reporting on performance, consulting and involving users, and providing remedies if things go wrong. It is also committed to 'locally-owned' programs to involve staff and users to the fullest.

The Australian Commonwealth Government turned to the use of service charters in order to transform the public sector into a more efficient, business like, and client-focused service. In 1997, the Prime Minister announced their program, More Time for Business, to encourage public sector organizations in Australia to focus on services delivered, measure and assess performance, and initiate performance improvement on an ongoing basis.

United States^[13]

"Customer service standards are developed with the customer in mind and are designed to meet customer expectations. They are clear performance targets which measure customer satisfaction. These standards describe how accurate, reliable, timely, dependable and accessible services are delivered to customers. Each standard should be measurable, achievable, controllable and address what is most important to our customers."

Australia^[14]

The Australian Department of Finance and Administration defines a service charter as follows:

"A service charter is a short publication that describes the service experience a client can expect from an agency. It allows for an open and transparent approach that all parties understand and can work within. It covers key information about an agency's service delivery approach and the relationship the client will have with the agency, including:

• what the agency does;
• how to contact and communicate with the agency;
• the standard of service clients can expect;
• clients' basic rights and responsibilities; and
• how to provide feedback or make complaint.

A charter need not cover every function and service an agency provides, or detail every aspect of service delivery. Rather, it should focus on the key areas seen as important by the agency's clients, stakeholders and staff. Essentially, it is living document that must evolve in line with changes to the agency and its clients. A charter in itself is not intended to confer legally enforceable rights on clients of Commonwealth agencies, although some individual commitments in that charter may have legislative links. Agencies might consider having their charter reviewed by a legal expert to ensure that the wording used does not inadvertently give rise to legal liability. A service charter is a public document that should be used as the driver for cultural change within the agency. This change can encompass client focus, changed business practices, outcomes rather than process, better and more responsive communications, and improved relationships with clients."

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom Cabinet Office's Modernizing Public Services Group defines a 'charter' as follows^[15]:

"The main purpose of developing a charter is to improve access to public services and promote quality. It does this by encouraging the involvement of users and others in discussions about the service, telling them how to make contact, what level of service to expect, and how to seek a remedy if something goes wrong. The Charter does not in itself create new legal rights. But it helps users to claim existing rights, and may create new rights that are enforceable through non-legal means (for example through a complaints procedure or independent adjudicator). The key features of a charter are: a statement of the standards of service users can expect to receive; the arrangements for seeking a remedy should something go wrong; and information on the service provided (including contact numbers and addresses). Charters help staff too, by setting out clearly the services their organization provides. But their main audience is the user."

"A good charter will be:

• simple, accessible documents which tell users about an organization's service, the standards it will provide so that both users and staff know what the public can expect, and how they can contribute to setting them;
• based on widespread consultation with users and front-line staff;
• clear and effective in the remedies they set out when things go wrong;
• supported by well-developed systems and procedures, including for staff training, complaints handling and feedback, as well as for reporting and reviewing standards; and
• publicized in management and public documents, so that the organization is publicly accountable to users for delivering its standards."

The South African government has a similar approach. They base their initiative on a 'customer' concept - people should come first. They have identified the following eight principles to follow as part of Batho Pele (People First)^[16]:

1. Consultation - Citizens should be consulted about the level and quality of the public services they receive and, wherever possible, should be given a choice about the services that are offered
2. Service standards - Citizens should be told what level and quality of public services they will receive so that they are aware of what to expect
3. Access - All citizens should have equal access to the services to which they are entitled
4. Courtesy - Citizens should be treated with courtesy and consideration
5. Information - Citizens should be given full, accurate information about the public services they are entitled to receive
6. Openness and transparency - Citizens should be told how national and provincial departments are run, how much they cost, and who is in charge
7. Redress - If the promised standard of service is not delivered, citizens should be offered an apology, a full explanation and a speedy and effective remedy; and when complaints are made, citizens should receive a sympathetic, positive response
8. Value for money - Public services should be provided economically and efficiently in order to give citizens the best possible value for money

This framework, in combination with other factors, demonstrates to the client that the department they are dealing with and the government, in general, is committed to satisfying their service expectations.

From the employees' perspective, the framework also delineates: their service goals and service standards, why these standards are necessary, how important their role is in creating and maintaining these standards, and where to turn should they encounter any problems or have any questions. It demonstrates the importance of client satisfaction as opposed to a series of new rules to follow.

For the federal government, the Treasury Board Secretariat's How-to Guide says "Service standards are a commitment by the organization to provide a certain level of service to clients. These are usually in areas such as communications, access, timeliness, interactions between staff and clients, and costs ... consistency counts…service standards must incorporate performance objectives ... important tools for managing client expectations and should reflect the available resources "^[17]

The Guide then describes the elements of service standards:

• a description of the service provided and, where applicable, benefits clients are entitled to receive,
• service quality pledges or principles that describe the quality of service delivery clients can expect to receive, focussing on such elements as openness, fairness, courtesy, professionalism, choice of official language,
• performance objectives for key service aspects, such as timeliness, access, and accuracy of delivery,
• cost of delivering the service, and
• a clear complaint and redress mechanism for clients when they feel standards have not been met.

As part of its reaffirmation of its commitment, the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA) published a guide to assist its managers and staff design, develop, monitor, review or improve their program service standards. The guide states that "Service standards publicly state the level of performance the CCRA is committed to and, correspondingly, that citizens can reasonably expect to encounter".^[18] This definition, which is perfectly consistent with TBS' How-to Guide, zeroes in on the essence of what a service standard is.

The CCRA recognizes that service standards for its compliance and enforcement activities have to take into account that many recipients of these activities have difficulty distinguishing between process and outcome issues. Service standards for these types of activities should focus on the process itself by ensuring clear expectations that relate to the CCRA's objective and approach, fair treatment and timeliness, where appropriate, and not on whether the client receives the desired outcome.^[19] Accordingly, service standards for regulatory, inspection and enforcement activities should be focused more on the first four drivers of citizen satisfaction rather than the fifth, namely, outcome.

Table 1 compares service standard principles, as defined by Canada, United States, United Kingdom and Australia. The Canadian service principles are based on Appendix F of the How-to Guide for the Service Improvement Initiative.^[20]

Table 1. Comparative analysis of Nation service standard principles.

Service Standard Principles
Principle	United States	Australia	United Kingdom	Canada
Widespread and equitable			√[21]	√
Work with other service providers			√	√
Meaningful to individuals	√	√	√	√
Based on consultation	√	√	√	√
Drivers of client satisfaction outlined		√	√	√
Attainable yet challenging	√	√	√	√
Affordable	√	√	√	√
Owned by managers and employees	√	√	√	√
Published	√	√	√	√
Performance measured and reported	√	√	√	√
Reviewed and updated	√	√	√	√
Re-engineering	√

In essence, a service standard is a criterion adopted by an organization defining how it should behave with respect to its client base (client base may be internal or external, see Chapter 3 - "How to develop a Service Standard"). Service standards may be public or internal policy.

Faye Schmidt makes the distinction between service standards and service targets. She defines service standards as "…statements or pledges that describe what level a service will be provided at (or the quality clients can expect to receive today)…."^[22] She contrasts this against service targets, which are "…goals the organization is ultimately working towards." This approach, of "ultimately working towards" a target, highlights the importance of on-going effort and commitment to service measuring and improvement.

The Ontario Government defines service standards in terms of service targets that citizens should expect. The Ontario Public Service (OPS) Quality Service Initiative, which was released in June 1998, was set up with three goals and objectives, namely:

• Increase public satisfaction with OPS service;
• Ontario will measure up to external benchmarks in the public and private sectors; and
• Ontario will set the benchmark for quality among similar jurisdictions.^[23]

The quality service framework is supported by Common Service Standards, which enable the OPS to be consistent in their application of the framework with customers or clients across ministries, measure how they are doing over time and demonstrate results. These standards were developed from information obtained in large scale surveys of Onatrio citizens and they reflect the levels of performance that Ontario citizens expect from their government.^[24]

The Common Service Standards define minimum levels that ministries are expected to achieve. The Standards define quantitative performance targets for telephone service (e.g., calls are to be answered by the third ring, eight times out of ten during core business hours, calls are not to be redirected more than once), correspondence (i.e., mail, fax or e-mail is to be answered within 15 days of receipt or acknowledged within five days if a conclusive response is not possible within that time frame), walk-in service and complaint resolution (i.e., acknowledged within two days).

Service standard appears to be a very common term as indicated by its usage by the various governments. However, CCRA points out the importance of distinguishing between service standards and operational performance standards, even though they both are measurable indications of work performed and information from both is used to assess performance through the CCRA Balanced Scorecard.^[25] Performance measures are important for internal management in order for managers to track progress against overall program delivery objectives. CCRA highlights the differences between service standards and performance standards as follows:

Service standards	Operational performance standards
Client focused	Management focused
Publicly known	Internally known
External and internal accountability	Internal accountability

CCRA offers the following example:^[26]

• responding to an enquiry within 10 days from the date it has been received by the CCRA is a client service standard from a client perspective; and
• responding to an enquiry within 10 days of assignment to an officer is an operational performance standard from a manager's perspective.

According to CCRA, service standards are formulated with client involvement and focus on the aspects of service that are important to clients, whereas performance standards are internally formulated and focus on control points to manage operations.^[27] Operational performance standards can be a good place to start developing service standards, as one moves from an internal processing standard to one that is meaningful to clients and communicated externally. Moving from a performance to a service standard can save design time and effort, and can simplify the issues of monitoring and reporting.

In summary then, a service standard is a client-focused standard, whereas an operational performance or process standard is more of an internal management measure, with the latter two focusing more on how resources, i.e., staff and funds, are allocated and managed.

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