Community/Personal roles in managing Service Delivery
It has for long
been a challenge when it comes to community participation in Service delivery at all levels right from planning to implementation and evaluation of results!
Citizens in most developing countries have taken it to be the only role of the
State and Government to provide services and have forgotten that it can as well
be their own role as well. One may ask how and why should take part in Service delivery or can do a contribution; but it is an easy deal here. One has only to play the social and civic roles
and responsibilities as provided for in a Constitution or other laws
governing country of their residence and hold the Governments and leaders including bureaucrats accountable to
ensure that there is efficiency and effectiveness in Service Delivery at grass root levels.
Constitutionally
for example in Uganda, it is the role of the citizens to ensure that service
delivery is effective and efficient as already planned by the central
government for example. Therefore, the general public plays an important role
in ensuring effective and efficient service delivery. As one scholar argued
that “Service experiences are the outcomes of interactions between
organizations, related systems/processes, service employees and customers” (Mary
Jo Bitner, William T. Faranda, Amy R. Hubbert and Valarie A. Zeithaml [Received June
1996 Revised January 1997])[i]
therefore the community is the sole controller of SD all over the world.
In some cases,
consumer inputs are required to aid the service organization in creating the
service (moderate level of participation). Inputs can include information,
effort or physical possessions. All three of these inputs are required for a
CPA to prepare a client’s tax return effectively: information in the form of
tax history, marital status and number of dependents; effort from the client in
putting the information together in a useful fashion; and physical possessions
such as receipts, past tax returns, etc. Similar types of information, effort
and possessions are required when the customer is an organization seeking to
outsource services such as payroll, customer database management, or tax
accounting.[ii]
In some situations,
customers can actually be involved in co-creating the service (high level of
participation). For such services, customers have essential production roles
that, if not fulfilled, will affect the nature of the service outcome. All
forms of education, training and health maintenance fit this profile. Unless
the customer does something (e.g. studies, exercises, eats the right foods),
the service provider cannot effectively deliver the service outcome.[iii]
Similarly, an organization seeking training services for its employees will
need to help define the nature of the training, identify the right employees
for the training, provide incentives for them to learn and facilitate their use
of the training on the job. If the organization does not do this, it and the
employees involved will not receive the full benefits of the service.
Customers’ roles in
service experiences
Within the levels of participation
just discussed, customers can play a variety of roles. It is believed without
doubt that;
§ The customer is
productive resource;
§ The customer is
contributor to quality, satisfaction and value; and
§ The customer is competitor
to the service organization.
And in our case on Public Service
delivery, service recipients are the customers and the Government or State is a
service provider.
Scholarly
Chronology of customer participation
Author
|
Major
customer participation issue addressed
|
Lovelock and
Young (1979)
|
Service firms
should be encouraged to involve customers more in production in order to
increase productivity
|
Langeard et al.
(1981)
|
Using seven
service dimensions to discriminate among groups, authors segmented consumers
according to their willingness to participate as service co-producers
|
Bateson (1983;
1985)
|
Demonstrated
empirically that, across several service industries, a portion of customers’
finds self-service intrinsically attractive. Also found a portion of
customers who are not at all interested in selfservice
|
Mills, Chase and
Margulies
|
Improved service
performance can be attained by viewing the (1983) client/customer as a
“partial” employee
|
Bowen and
Schneider (1985)
|
Advocated the
employment of organizational socialization tools to provide customers
“realistic previews” of their forthcoming service experience
|
Silpakit and Fisk
(1985)
|
More clearly
defined the concept of customer participation.
Proposed a
theoretical framework for “participating” the service encounter, i.e.
maximizing the consumer’s participation in the
service
|
Mills and Morris
(1986)
|
Advocated viewing
clients as “partial” employees of service organizations; this perspective
guided development of a model of client involvement stages
|
Larsson and Bowen
(1989)
|
Advocated use of
script theory to socialize customers as “partial” employees of the service
organization, so that the firm can reduce uncertainty in service operations
by clarifying appropriate customer behaviours
|
Kelley, Donnelley
and Skinner (1990); Kelley, Skinner, and Donnelley (1992)
|
Suggested
organization socialization process as means for customers to learn
participation roles. Empirically assessed the level of organizational
socialization of customers in a financial services setting. Higher levels
were found to be positively related to several factors, including customer
satisfaction
|
By; Julius Byaruhanga
[i] Mary Jo Bitner Arizona State University,
Tempe, Arizona, USA, William
T. Faranda, University
of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, Amy R. Hubbert University of
Nebraska-Omaha, Omaha, USA, Valarie
A. Zeithaml, University
of North Carolina, North Carolina, US 1997. Customer
contributions and roles in service delivery
[ii] Ibid
[iii] Ibid
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