**CRM BEGINS TO PAY OFF**

*by Thomas Davies*

*Senior Vice President, Current Analysis*

After many false starts, CRM in state and local government is finally
beginning to gain real traction and deliver tangible results. Most would
say it's about time.

The groundwork for CRM in the public sector was laid with the government
reinvention initiatives that first began in state and local government
over ten years ago. At its core, reinvention centered around treating
citizens as customers and becoming more responsive to individual citizen
needs. Government was mirroring popular management trends in the
commercial market that called for mass customization and one-to-one
marketing.

In their re-invention efforts many top officials in state and local
governments focused initially on changing the culture of government. A
new lexicon was introduced, referring to citizens as customers;
government regulations were rewritten to become customer focused;
widespread training was conducted to instill new attitudes in management
and front line workers; and best practices were widely transferred
across the country.

As time went on, it became clear that reinvention was falling short of
its goal. What was missing was the capability to empower front line
workers. They did not have the tools necessary to operationalize the
lofty ideals underlying reinvention.

Most importantly frontline workers didn't have timely access to a
holistic view of citizens and their dealings with government. Each
interaction with a citizen was a one-time event; they had no ability to
link interactions across time, programs and agencies. The left-hand
simply didn't know what the right-hand was doing.

A unified, integrated view of all interactions between citizens and
their government---via phone calls, e-mails, letters, requests---is the
critical linchpin of reinvention. It is unrealistic to expect citizens
to be treated as customers if those responsible for delivering services
do not have the tools and information at their fingertips that allow
them to do their jobs.

This is where reinvention broke down. In the absence of such
capabilities, government workers could not walk the talk of treating
citizens as customers. Tremendously appealing concepts such as "one stop
shopping" and "customer friendly service" could not be achieved without
significant investments in customer relationship management (CRM)
skills, solutions and competencies.

For many, the deployment of CRM solutions is a turning point in their
ongoing journey to rebuild citizen faith in government. One need look no
further than 311 citizen contact centers to see the potential of CRM to
make a contribution to improving the delivery of government services.

Local governments across the United States have been implementing such
contact centers since 1977, when the Federal Communications Commission
approved the use of the number 3-1-1 for non-emergency government
services. Today, you can find 311 contact centers in cities as diverse
as Baltimore, MD; New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA; Hampton, VA; and
Dallas, TX. The lessons learned from their experiences with CRM and 311
services are applicable to many other equally promising technologies now
on the horizon.

Take the case of Houston, TX, the fourth largest city in the United
States. Like most other large U.S. cities, Houston was faced with
providing enhanced citizen services through a highly fragmented delivery
system. Multiple city departments were responsible for citizen services.
Not only did each have its own technologies and business practices for
responding to citizen calls but many also had their own phone numbers.
As a result citizens were often left feeling frustrated and confused.
Adding to the city's woes were the duplicative administrative costs it
was incurring as it struggled to support multiple departmental citizen
contact centers.

Houston made a commitment to provide citizens with access to multiple
city services, 7x24x365, through a single citywide 311 center. The first
step to doing so was to consolidate the contact centers into a single
location. All agency call center employees were then re-deployed to the
new location. The city also adopted a single standard CRM solution.

The Houston experience is instructive about what it takes to reap the
benefits of CRM technologies in government.

-   CRM technologies are best used in conjunction with other
    technologies such as computer telephony integration, knowledge
    databases, interactive voice response (IVR) and other advanced
    technologies.

-   CRM needs to be tightly integrated with legacy systems such as
    workflow management and correspondence tracking systems.

-   CRM needs to be accompanied by changes in organization structure,
    workflow processes and policies that set new standards for
    performance and accountability.

-   CRM results in a skills gap that needs to be addressed through
    targeted and sustained training.

-   CRM needs to accommodate the many diverse points of citizen contact
    including voice, fax, e-mail and the web.

-   CRM needs to be deployed as part of a well-designed integrated
    delivery system.

CRM in state and local government is just in its infancy. It takes time
to change government business processes, information management
policies, and workflow practices. In programs such as social services
and job placement, areas of high CRM potential, this will require a
tremendous amount of federal, state and local collaboration.

Nor will there be a one-size-fits-all solution to the CRM needs of
government. The largest governments are likely to design and implement
customized enterprise-wide CRM solutions. Even with commercial-off-the
shelf-technologies these will be complex, and costly, undertakings.
Others will take advantage of the emerging application service provider
(ASP) model, which will allow governments to avoid costly up-front
investments in technology. This approach will become especially
attractive to the small-to-medium-size governments.

Regardless of which approach a government adopts, or which CRM
technology it implements, government will find it increasingly difficult
to remember what it was like before these new technologies and
citizen-centric delivery systems were put in place. And so will its
citizens.

Thomas Davies is senior vice president at Current Analysis, in Sterling,
VA. He can be reached at (703) 788-3670 or
<tdavies@currentanalysis.com>. An earlier version of this article
appeared in *Washington Technology*. The author would like to thank
Michael Antash, formerly with the City of Houston, for his insights into
the establishment of the city's 311 citizen contact center.