Cover Story

Citizen's CRM

For years CRM has been used as a tool for improving customer engagements in the private sector but governments have reversed this trend. Many state governments are doing PoCs to improve government-to-citizen services & RTI using CRM By Rajendra Chaudhary

Government agencies and state departments aren't exactly the most service-driven and citizen-friendly institutions out there. While this statement is valid pretty much everywhere in the world, it holds true particularly well here in India.

Government departments, federal and state, function as they will and at their own pace with little or no accountability. However, in recent years, thanks to growing awareness among the masses about their civic rights and responsibilities and initiatives of public interest such as the Right to Information (RTI) Act, things have begun to change, albeit slowly. CRM has emerged as a technology solution to fill the gap.

Although numerous e-Governance initiatives currently implemented by the various state agencies are doing their bit to empower the masses little has been done to improve citizen service aspect up until now. For instance there appears to be no real-time mechanism for citizens to find out about the status of their service request, complaints or grievances. For example if a citizen files a complaint to the department of public utilities about voltage fluctuations in a particular area or a water scarcity problem etc, there is actually no way that the citizen can track the progress of the complaint or trace the escalation route. In order to find out about anything pertaining to the complaint, the citizen has no other option but to go chasing after 'Babus' from one office desk to another.

Similarly, a citizen may want to correct or update his ration card and for that he or she puts in a requisition to the local Food & Civil Supplies office. It can take days if not weeks for the concerned authorities to fulfill the request. During this time the request is being 'worked upon' and there is no formal system in place which can update the citizen about the progress of his or her application.

The aforementioned scenarios are simply a couple of examples of how difficult things can get for citizens when they deal with government departments. It is therefore incumbent upon these state departments to put in place some mechanism that keep citizens informed about their service requests, grievances or other such concerns.

One of the ways that issues such as these can be addressed is by the introduction of technologies such as CRM, only here the alphabet 'C' would stand for 'Citizen' and not 'Customer'. Talisma, CRM vendor, has developed a solution called the 'Citizen Relationship Management' which is essentially a software designed especially for the government departments that helps them manage their relationship with the public at large an efficient and transparent manner.

According to Rajendra Mruthyunjayappa, Managing Director-Asia Pacific & Europe, Talisma, the solution allows government departments to efficiently manage citizen queries, grievances, and the public's complaints. Detailing how the solution works, he informed that the moment a citizen files a query, a time tracking tool is activated. As time progresses and the response to the query gets delayed, the query rises in priority moving up the chain and finally ends up reaching the higher offices. Therefore, solution establishes accountability and even encourages faster response to public. At the citizen's end, a citizen portal allows the public to check the status of their queries and also the details of the action taken and the people attending to the same.

The company claims that the software also helps government departments comply with the RTI Act.

Talisma is currently busy carrying out Proof of Concepts (PoCs) with some state government departments such as Tourism and Surface Transport of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Additionally, it is also conducting two pilots with the Kerala government—one, in the Food and Civil Services department and another in Urban Development Department where citizens can report grievances such as electricity issues, water problems or other similar concerns to the authorities and get them to act in those areas. They can even give their suggestions and recommendations for the resolution of those problems. It's essentially a forum for citizens to come in and voice their concerns and have them heard by the people in-charge of things in the Urban Development Authority.

Although the solution is yet to be purchased by any of the government offices, Mruthyunjayappa is optimistic about the whole exercise and believes that the solution is creating considerable buzz in the market which bodes well for future adoption.

rajendra.c@expressindia.com