Marketing public services

by Paul Crookall

Dr. Philip Kotler is one of the top marketing minds in the business. Along with Peter Drucker, he is credited with moving the marketing field away from a focus on price and distribution to one of meeting customer needs. There is a similar move occurring in the public service, where the approach of telling citizens, "I am a bureaucrat, I know what is best for you and will provide it to you", is being replaced by citizen-centred service, listening to citizens, asking, "tell me your priorities for service. How can I better meet your needs as you understand them?"

Public servants need to constantly have in their thinking and values that they are working for the public; that’s in the very language of the term ‘public servants’. They have been hired by the public to do a job that the public pays for. This is the starting point for a ‘citizen-centred orientation’.

A problem arises, however, in defining the public. There are countless individuals and groups expecting to be served promptly and accurately by public servants. Some of these groups may make conflicting claims for time and attention, as happens when there are competing lobbyists on an issue. Yet the public servant must confront these conflicts of interest by focusing on the question: “How can I best serve the greater public interest?”

There is a further implication of practicing a ‘citizen-centred’ orientation. Public servants must carry out their engagements with individuals in a respectful way. In the business world, employees are trained to deliver customer satisfaction; if they fail, the customer can be lost. In the public sector, the public servant is the court of last resort. They can give fast or slow service, they can explain things well or poorly, and so on.

Hopefully the government has set up means to monitor the performance of individual public servants to make sure that a few bad apples don’t spoil the image of caring that public servants should show.

I agree with Henry Mintzberg that citizens are not customers. They have rights, responsibilities and obligations. But this is also true for managers in a private company. Although a company ultimately aims to satisfy its customers, other factors can intervene. A company may not want to continue with customers on whom they lost money. A company may even abandon one market and move to another. So there are always other factors that might compromise “do what is best for the customer.”

Public servants may have to effect similar compromises of “do what is best for the citizen.” For example, citizens might want auto license bureaus to be open in the evening; but there may not be the tax money to fund this. Many citizens might want more police patrolling the city but this will conflict with other citizens who don’t want to pay higher taxes. Which citizens should be listened to in these cases? Clearly, a government could be rated high on practicing a ‘citizen-centred’ orientation and yet some citizens might be very unhappy about a lot of things.

Pollsters report that confidence and trust in government (and public service) has been declining for the past two decades. At the same time, reliable surveys in Canada show that if you ask a specific question: "How satisfied were you with your interactions with government and the public services provided to you in the past year?" an opposite trend is seen – service satisfaction has been rising about one to two percent a year for the past decade. What can we be doing to contribute to changing the public perception of and confidence in our work? Are there marketing techniques to use? Obviously, we have to do a great job on which to base our marketing.

I can accept that citizen satisfaction is rising with their encounters with public servants and at the same time that citizen confidence in the government is declining. The best way to explain this is that the citizens’ view of government comes from their view of politicians and not of public service personnel. Politicians are increasingly seen as operating on self-interest and ready to favour policies favoured by the strongest lobbyists. The public sees very few politicians who first consider the broad public interest as opposed to a narrow public interest and their own interest.

The problem is further complicated by the fact that the media plays up stories that cast politicians in a bad light. The main hope is to get more honest and thoughtful politicians. I don’t think any marketing campaign could work to make the public think better of politicians until they become better public servants.

Public servants are more into selling ideas and encouraging new behaviour than into selling products and services. We try to get people to stop smoking, follow the Canada Food Guide, treat minorities with respect, etc. How can the tools of marketing be used to help achieve these behaviour shifts? The usual approach is to present the facts. Should we be looking at a more dynamic approach?

‘Social marketing’ is the term and techniques that we use to encourage citizens to engage in more healthful behaviour. Social marketing goes beyond presenting the facts; otherwise we call it education. When HIV/AIDS broke out in the US, the Surgeon General published a long booklet in small print about the dangers of AIDS and mailed it to every household. It was a waste of money. Facts alone can rarely motivate. Social marketing seeks to research and present a distinct value proposition to each target group that would provide the strongest mental and emotional motivation for changing one’s behaviour.

How have some public service agencies used marketing tools to better achieve their mission?

Here are two examples. The US Postal Service (USPS) operated for years without any innovation or dynamism until FedEx came along to challenge USPS. Even then it took some years for new leadership to develop and counterattack.

Today the US Postal Service has a Chief Marketing Officer. The USPS has been developing five skills involved in a successful marketing mindset:
·     Adopting a customer-centred focus
·     Segmenting and targeting the market
·     Identifying the competition
·     Utilizing all 4Ps in the marketing mix
·     Monitoring efforts and making adjustments.

The evidence of a revitalized and innovative US Postal Service is in the following:
·     Consumers can choose to get stamps in different formats, including books, adhesives, rolls, even subscriptions.
·     The post offices now carry mailing products including bubble envelopes, holiday boxes, pre-inked rubbers stamps, scales and embossers.
·     The postal managers develop unique postal services for businesses.
·     Consumers find free DVDs in the post office on how to protect their household from telemarketing fraud, work at home scams and identity theft.
·     The post office presents the ability to design and mail your own holiday cards and postcards for special occasions and business uses.
·     Consumers can contribute to social causes through the purchase of certain dedicated stamps.
·     The post office provides ancillary services including Selective Service registration and applications for passports.

As a very different example of effective marketing of a public service, consider what Alan Brunacini, Fire Chief in Phoenix, Arizona, has done to serve those whose property has been damaged by fire. The logo on the side of Phoenix fire trucks says who they are: “Our Family Helping Your Family.” Their mission statement says what they do: “Prevent Harm. Survive. Be Nice.” Their manuals and training materials say how they do it: “Respond Quickly. Solve Problems. Provide Personal Treatment.”

His people go beyond putting out a fire. In a case where a lumber yard had a fire, the fire department helped the owner set up new phone lines to carry on business the next day, provided photos to the claims office, and did other things to smooth a return to normal. And the fire department is equally active in fire prevention through targeted communication campaigns throughout Phoenix, with the aim of making Phoenix fire-free.