The Customer Service of a Public Sector Organization - Research Proposal Example

Work Based Project Introduction The research proposal is about the services within my organization, which is a public sector organization, and the department I work for is the Waste Collection and Street Cleansing department. The customer service of a public sector organization is probably the most important department in the whole organization itself because it is the interface through which government interacts with the public. It delivers the voice of the customer on which the respective departments need to take quick action so to have the public contented with the work of the government. Background The departments of public sector organizations that are gaining most importance these days are waste collection and street cleansing for a number of reasons. Firstly, waste management is becoming an issue globally and there are drastic steps being undertaken to ensure that waste is properly collected and managed. For managing it, the pre-requisite is proper collection. The pipeline of processes i.e. appropriate management and disposal comes next to collection because waste is nothing good by any means to have warehoused or stored, it needs to be disposed on an urgent basis alongside waste cannot be left lying idle for long. So there is tremendous importance of its appropriate mechanisms and scheduling of collection. In addition, timely collection of wastage leads to cleanliness in town that has several other benefits such as healthy environment, attraction for foreigners (tourism and investment), etc. Secondly, the road cleansing is also of extreme importance. Keeping roads cleaned not just keeps the environment and town cleaned but also extends the life of the roads by means of good maintenance. And again keeping the towns clean attracts masses to enjoy and adds to the beautification. Problem Statement So far things seem pretty smooth because the jobs are well defined and so are the consequences to it. However, the problem arises due to the fact that in accordance with the rules of economics, there are limited or scarce resources; thus, appropriate allocation is a mandatory action. Accordingly, there are limited resources for the waste management and street cleansing department as well in terms of machinery and human resource available. Consequently, it becomes difficult to have an eye on all the streets and places at the same time. Therefore, there is need of public cooperation rather than criticism. So the problem here is making public realize that there are constraints and making them feel that it is their responsibility to lodge complain once there is an issue, and wait patiently till it is resolved. Reforms in the waste management sector over the past years have been extensive. These reforms have altered the industry’s structures, its rigid oversight and pricing measures. The reforms have delivered considerable good organizational gains in the form of lesser real prices, higher dividends, and higher real rates of return, higher standards and greater capital investment. However additional efficiency may be obtainable in the industry, it is reasonable to say that future gains will be poorer and that higher standards may result in increased prices for services. Literature Review Analyzing the Regulations The want for regulation in the industry is self-evident, but it is very important that it be as effectual and efficient as probable and should deliver real community benefits. One controlling area of significance to the industry is standard setting. The concern is that the industry suggests that the increasing trend in standards in the areas of customer service, public health and the environment is resulting in sharp increases in capital expenditure for the urban water industry. The problem is that in general capital costs accounting for sixty percent of the industry’s total costs and with underground pipes amounting to around seventy percent of all capital costs, setting standards for areas such as water continuity is particularly important. This makes it important to make decisions on the intensity at which future standards will be set within a scaffold that evaluates both the benefits (from the customers’ perspective) and costs of the proposed higher standards; higher values can then be adopted when it is clear that the benefits prevail over the costs. Accordingly, we are ready to develop an appropriate methodology for such a framework. The project has 2 different modules: The recognition of customer preferences and a methodology for measuring them; The classification and assessment of lifecycle costs of meeting standards for provisional stability. The above structure will aid utilities and regulators to comprehend better what is important to customers and will include total community costs (and not merely the costs to the utility). The structure incorporates long-term assessments and not merely short-term impacts of such decisions. In this proposal, adequate information is given to give an insight into each module and then the application of the section methodology is demonstrated. The approach shows interlinks among the workings and the approach a water company or regulator could take in developing standards within a cost-benefit framework. From this work, three secondary methodologies have been developed. These include: Determination of customer preferences Determining customer readiness to pay to attain their stated preferences or willingness to accept compensation if a reduction in a standard is proposed A method and connected model for calculating the cost of achieving these preferences, which can be manipulated to show the cost of different standards below a variety of policy settings. Analyzing the Regulations Waste Management is an interesting phenomenon; the initial step of the same phenomenon is ‘collection’, which is followed by subsequent steps such as transportation, processing, recycling/disposal, etc. Waste management is essential for betterment of health and clean environment. Dirty or unclean atmosphere gives birth to several diseases and devastates a lot of facilities that are directly influenced by cleanliness such as water, health, oxygen, etc. thereby, the most important and crucial step in waste management, as emphasized earlier as well, stands as waste collection. in the broad category of waste collection there can be several places from which waste can be collected. Therefore, hierarchy-wise, there is a waste management board under which there are sections of operations performed (as mentioned above), and underneath the section of waste collection, there are areas of speciality for example there would be a department designated for waste collection from the streets, another for collection from localities, and so on. The focus of this assignment is on the waste collection and cleansing of streets. The practices for the same may vary from nation to nation and from administration to administration. Considering the example of Australia, the households that exist there in the urban region throw out 240 litre loaded bins each week as done by the local councils. In Europe and some other countries across the world, there are private networks that do this collection job, one of the renowned one being Envac that has prepared collection mechanism using underground vacuum systems. Roosevelt Island had a similar system deployed since the mid-1970s. The most common mechanism of waste collection in Canada is through the curbside collection i.e. in the urban areas. In the rural areas, the waste is collected at a transfer station. Thus, commenting deeply on the issue, each state has a professionally made and maintained system for wastage collection that has ability to collect waste from all odds. The streets in this regard hold extreme importance. According to the Environmental Protection Act 1990, it is obligatory on authorities to keep roads and pathways clean and clear of litter and rubbish. District Councils have the obligations of road cleansing. As mentioned earlier that it is essential to have the streets and roads cleaned due to numerous reasons. First and foremost important reason is to elongate the life of the streets. People everywhere do see roods and streets being constructed and are aware of the procedures. If any waste whatsoever, let alone any hazardous one, is allowed to spoil the cleanliness of the streets, it might get pushed into some sewerage lines or might get stuck in the charcoal of the street. In the first case, the sewerage line would get choked and polluted causing improper flow of water, water shortage, dirtiness in water (water pollution), and other issues along with the massive inconvenience caused for the general public. In the later case, as the litter gets stuck in the charcoal, it would spoil its performance and long lastingness causing the roads to bend and creating jumps and bumps on the way; it can even cause the roads to get hampered as a net effect. This procedure of happening, i.e. the later one, takes a while to happen but it is just a small piece of litter that can lead to all of it. So the main aim is to ensure that such small and many other big reasons are eliminated, and it is assured that both of these occurrences do not take place anytime in the future. In similar regard, the importance of the street cleansing department of cleansing services comes into play and its role gains true significance. There would be many streets even in a small town, or probably one street running across and going over the whole town. Yet with the ultimate limitation of resources, it become very difficult to keep an eye on all streets; even the difficult application of cameras on all streets sounds very unrealistic. Due to these difficulties, there is need for customer services centre in which the people can call and register their complaints about having any litter on streets that are close to them or where they witness the same. This way, it would be easier for the collection personnel to schedule a trip to the affected region as soon as possible and if a trend is created then have a scheduled visit to such places on a regular basis. Customer Service Standard An important and decisive factor is the customer service standards that are in place. If customers are reluctant to accept any disturbances in collection methodology then the functional life is much shorter than that for a pipeline whose customers are ready to accept interruptions coupled with failures and the following repair of these failures. The point to be stressed upon is that the additional cost of providing the higher level of nonstop service needs to be compared to a customer’s willingness to pay. Usually customer service levels are allocated by regulation based on historic performance, rather than on an assessment of both costs and benefits. In the mathematical approach statisticians model the probability of failures using regression techniques on attributes of the collection mechanisms, its environment and handling to establish associations, which can be used for forecast of failures. This requires many independent records on actual bursts for a successful estimation via regression. Consequently it means that the more explaining variables are used, the more observations are needed. Stats requires a lot of sample that is it is important to have large data in order to do correct estimation whereas in most sources the number of failure records for individual is too small for good individual estimates, so bundling can be essential into age cohorts with similar environment. References 1. Michael D LaGrega, Phillip L Buckingham, Jeffrey C Evans (2000) Environmental Resources Management 2. Hazardous Waste Management. 2nd Edition. McGraw-Hill. 3. George Tchobanoglous, Hilary Theisen, Samuel A Vigil (1993) Integrated Solid Waste Management. 4. Engineering Principles and Management Issues. 2nd Edition. McGraw-Hill. 5. Gilbert M. Masters (1997) Introduction to Environmental Engineering and Science. 2nd Edition. Prentice Hall. 6. George Tchobanoglous, Franklin L. Burton, H. David Stensel (2002) Wastewater Engineering: Treatment and Reuse. 4th Edition. McGraw-Hill. 7. A.L. Juhasz, G. Magesan and R. Naidu (eds.) (2004) Waste Management. University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, SA, Australia. 8. Rhodes, Greece (2004) WASTE MANAGEMENT. Second International Conference on Waste Management and the Environment. 29 September - 1 October 2004. Organised by Wessex Institute of Technology, UK 9. Michigan Historical Reprint Series (2005) Report of Commission on Street Cleaning and Waste Disposal, the city of New York, 1907. / Commissioners: H. de B. Parsons, Rudolph Hering, Samuel 10. Whinery. Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library. 11. Soper, George A. (George Albert) (1909) Modern methods of street cleaning. University of California Libraries 12. Peggy Carlaw & Vasudha K. Deming (1998.) The Big Book of Customer Service Training Games (Big Book of Business Games). 1st Edition. McGraw-Hill 13. Renee Evenson (2005) Customer Service Training 101: Quick And Easy Techniques That Get Great Results. AMACOM/American Management Association 14. Lisa Ford, David McNair, Bill Perry (2001) Exceptional Customer Service: Going Beyond Your Good Service to Exceed the Customers Expectation. Adams Media Corporation 15. Robert Bacal (2004) Perfect Phrases for Customer Service: Hundreds of Tools, Techniques, and Scripts for Handling Any Situation (Perfect Phrases). 1st Edition. McGraw-Hill. 16. Bennett, J. and Blamey, R. (2001) The Choice Modeling Approach to Environmental Factors. Edward Edgar 17. Hatton MacDonald, D. and Young, M., et al. (2002) Valuing Water Supply Interruption Preferences: The Development of a Methodology 18. David J Ketchen, Donald D Bergh (2006) Research Methodology in Strategy and Management, Volume 3 (Research Methodology in Strategy and Management) JAI Press; 19. John W. Creswell (2002) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, Sage Publications, Inc 20. Shinn, D. C. and Gregg, P.M. (1984) The Needs of Government to Produce Services Social Indicators Research, 15, 1-16. 21. Daniel Eli Burnstein (2006) Next to Godliness: Confronting Dirt and Despair in Progressive Era New York City. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Methodology Choice of Methodology Methodology can be defined as the course of action that is to be undertaken for accomplishing a goal. The achievement or goal for this assignment is the collection of data and information for which appropriate methodology needs to be undertaken. Following are the few options that are available: Questionnaires Survey: Questionnaires are a very formal and organized manner of data collection whereby open-ended and close-ended questions are asked from a respondent and the completed set of questionnaires are then analyzed through statistical tests, tools, and techniques. Open-ended questions are the ones that ask the respondent to response in his/her own words while close-ended questions ensure that the respondent chooses one (or more) of the pre-selected answers. The later approach is easier for analysis purposes, while open-ended questions are difficult to analyze especially once the sample size increases. Interviews: Interviews are asking questions, getting response, and asking questions and moving on in a cycle like this till all queries are resolved. This mechanism is similar to open ended questions but the difference being a face to face correspondence with the respondent leading to abrupt questions that can be developed from within the previous answers. Focus Groups: Focus group is when the relevant stakeholders of the issue are gathered to form a group and the topic that needs to be discovered is floated with opinions and cross-arguments coming up from all ends, this all takes the researcher into a reasonably good direction and provides tremendous data in terms of opinions of experts and direct stakeholders. There is also need for an un-bias moderator to moderate the discussion. Delphi Discussions: Delphi is a simple mechanism that allows people’s interaction and opinions in an anonymous manner. It goes like this; all participants get a piece of paper and write their opinions on it, and then the opinions are distributed to others and are asked to give their judgment based on this opinion. This is highly time-consuming but the best part of this mechanism is the fact that no opinion gets under-estimated or influenced by another. Literature Reviews: The simplest and the modest means of collecting data for research is literature review. As all the other mechanisms stated above are the primary research ones, this is a secondary research mechanism in which the literature of the subject is searched. This has several benefits that can be reaped from it. Firstly, there is tons of data available on the internet and this internet gives birth to the float of information that is at times, difficult to go through even. Some tremendous research work that has been done by some great researchers is thus available for view and extraction, alongside there are criticism and oppositions, and their answers and debates also available based on which the researcher can form their own opinion. The biggest advantage is knowing the best practices globally, which can in turn lead to a superb conclusion and appropriate decision making. Critical Evaluation of stated Methodologies Following is a critical evaluation of the positives and negatives of all the methodologies that have been discussed in the previous section: Methodology Positives Negatives Questionnaire Survey - Opinion of the masses - Accuracy - Time consuming - Costly - A lot of statistical analysis needed - A single mistake can ruin the whole outcome Interviews - Accuracy of data - Experts opinion - Inability to get masses to give their opinion - Time consuming - Costly Focus Groups - Accuracy - Lesser time consumed - Group discussion may lead to answering some un-said questions. - Costly - Difficulty in gathering precise audience Opinion of the focus group only Delphi Discussions - Opinion of the masses - Accuracy - Non-influenced opinion - No under-estimation - Very time consuming - Costly - Difficult to gather people to put in so much time. Literature Review - Expert opinion - Less time consuming - Availability of tons of information - Availability of criticism on what has been written - Availability of corrections - Data might be unreliable - Biasness of researcher - Inclusion of personal opinion making the research bias. In accordance and with reference to the above-mentioned tabular presentation, the methodology that seems the best fit to the current scenario is Literature Review and Interviews. Literature review has some tremendous positives and the negatives do not seem that effective. As for the interviews, it seems a cheaper way of getting access to high quality data i.e. expert opinion. A prior literature review before having the interview, would allow the verification of thoughts and queries that are generated in the researcher’s mind. Limitations of the Chosen Methodologies There are certain limitations or drawbacks of the chosen methodologies. Following are some of the most important ones: There has to be extreme reliance on the data that is available on the internet, books, and journals. The researcher has to be in an extremely neutral phase of mind during analysis else there are chances of biasness. Literature might be biased. The public sector organizational practices in the literature-review countries might differ from the home country practices. There may be unavailability of the prime gurus and experts. The gurus and experts may reserve their rights on certain points. The gurus and experts might have some personal differences or biased opinion. Limitations of the Study There are several limitations to this study; factors that would truly affect the progress of this report rather hamper it in a bad way. This prime and foremost limitation would be the lack of knowledge of best practices that are taking place globally in this regard and aspect. The recognition of this would have been an added advantage; the public sector organizations also have a diversified role in different countries so generalization becomes a difficult part, thus, that’s another limitation of the study. The interviewees might not have complete knowledge but may not express the same which would hamper the study on the whole. The sample for interview might not be a true representation of opinion. Data interpretation has got complexities in itself and that is another limitation to the study that has already been highlighted. Respondent biasness and the biasness of data analyst would add further constraints to the issue. Research Ethics This research would strictly follow the generalized and global code of ethics for research and development. As per the code, the anonymity of the respondents shall be maintained unless the respondent agrees on disclosure. The code application would also imply appropriate effectiveness in explaining the questions to the best of the respondent understanding and exerting no pressure whatsoever for answering any questions as these all are at total discretion of the respondent. The interviews shall be noted in paper-pencil format and in no form of recording whatsoever that reveals the respondent identify, unless of course the respondent has agreed upon it. Conclusion The main aim of this research is to provide an insight towards better customer management in the public sector organization that I work for i.e. waste management and street cleansing. Through this research, I would be able to fine issues and develop recommendations and suggestions that would in turn lead to better customer services. Methodology 1. Michael D LaGrega, Phillip L Buckingham, Jeffrey C Evans (2000) Environmental Resources Management 2. Hazardous Waste Management. 2nd Edition. McGraw-Hill. 3. George Tchobanoglous, Hilary Theisen, Samuel A Vigil (1993) Integrated Solid Waste Management. 4. Engineering Principles and Management Issues. 2nd Edition. McGraw-Hill. 5. Gilbert M. Masters (1997) Introduction to Environmental Engineering and Science. 2nd Edition. Prentice Hall. Read More