Singapore takes gold in Accenture olympiad

Accenture has released its eighth Leadership in Customer Service: Delivering on the Promise global research report and, among the 22 countries surveyed, standing at the winners podium are Singapore, Canada and the United States. The report examines the customer-service challenges, maturity and practices of governments around the world.

Countries included in the report are Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United States, and United Kingdom. In a departure from tradition, this year’s rankings incorporate direct citizen feedback to “assess more accurately the quality of government service delivery.” Input on criteria such as the user-friendliness of customer-service channels, quality of online services accessed by citizens, and overall citizen satisfaction ratings were factored in.

Accenture analysts also interviewed 52 government executives in 17 countries to understand their visions for the future, their current priorities and lessons learned.

Speaking on the report results, David T. Roberts, executive director of Customer Relationship Management in Accenture’s Government operating group, said that “Each [of the top three countries] continues to evolve its customer service strategies with an eye toward continuous improvement in each of the four key areas we identified in this year’s report: knowing the customer, making the connections, aligning your people, and not doing it alone. Moreover, Singapore and Canada do the best job of educating their citizens on their customer service initiatives, which results in more favorable citizen perceptions.”

The top of the table reflected some changes from the last Leadership in Customer Service report taken in 2005. Singapore grabbed the top spot from its no. 3 ranking in 2005, which report authors ascribed at least in part due to the inclusion of citizen input. Denmark, Sweden and Finland saw a bump from the effect as well, moving up to positions 4-6, as opposed to 5-7 in 2005.

Canada and the United States both dropped a spot and, while Canada’s fall was due primarily to Singapore’s rise, America’s fall from no. 2 to no. 3 revealed some trouble there. The United States’ drop was attributed to citizens’ perception that customer service has not improved in recent times: While 79 percent of Singaporean respondents believe their customer service has improved over the past three years, just 41 percent of US respondents say they believe that government customer service has gotten better.

The American survey also produced another significant result. In 20 out of 21 countries, citizens felt private-sector business was doing a better job than government in developing online services, with Singapore the only country where citizens felt the opposite was true. The largest gap in positive perception was in the United States, where 65 percent of respondents said private-sector business was doing a good or excellent job in developing online services, while only 38 percent said the same about government.