Collection and Use of Feedback in the Development and Optimization of Public Services: A Customer-Centric Approach

The concept of customer-centricity in Western business terminology has been used for a long time. Nevertheless, this is a relatively new practice for the sphere of public administration. The introduction of the principles of customer-centricity into the practice of public administration is considered to be a new stage in the development of the concepts of New Public Management, the Service State, the Digitalization of Public Services and Social Contract Theory.

One of the main principles of this approach is a constant work on the collection and analysis of the feedback from citizens which provides the possibility of taking into account people's opinions in the decision-making process including political decisions as well.

Currently, the requirements for working with feedback in Russian state bodies include: 1) the need for constant collection and regular analysis of the feedback; 2) assessment of customers’ satisfaction in all the processes and at each stage of public services provision; 3) monitoring of various satisfaction parameters; 4) using the results of the feedback analysis in further optimization and transformation of the services.

Encouraging feedback, focusing on taking into account the interests and needs of citizens and business representatives when developing new and optimizing existing services is an important part of the process of agreeing on new terms of a social contract and updating it.

The report will present the first results of the implementation of the customer-centricity principles at state bodies in Russia: the identified peculiarities of collecting and analyzing feedback in various state bodies, as well as conclusions based on data from sociological representative studies.