Customer Relationship Management and Citizenship: Technologies and Identities in Public Services

UK public services are characterised by a tension between a model of the service user as a customer of public services and a model which envisages the user as a citizen. Drawing on empirical work in one local authority, we argue that in this tension the model of the customer is bolstered by the availability of ‘shrink wrapped’ or ‘black boxed’ IT-based ‘solutions’, available under the rubric of Customer Relationship Management. We argue that those who advocate the citizen perspective need to engage at this material and technological level if they are to be effective.

[1]  J. Alford,et al.  Defining the Client in the Public Sector: A Social‐Exchange Perspective , 2002 .

[2]  James Cornford,et al.  Customer focus in UK e-government: Or, putting the politics back into e-government , 2007 .

[3]  David Lyon,et al.  Surveillance as Social Sorting : Privacy, Risk and Automated Discrimination , 2005 .

[4]  Tom Christensen,et al.  Citizens and Consumers , 2005 .

[5]  Nikhilesh Dholakia,et al.  Consumer subjectivity in the Age of Internet: the radical concept of marketing control through customer relationship management , 2004, Inf. Organ..

[6]  J. Grand.  Knights, Knaves or Pawns? Human Behaviour and Social Policy , 1997, Journal of Social Policy.

[7]  Stephen F. King.  Citizens as customers: Exploring the future of CRM in UK local government , 2007, Gov. Inf. Q..

[8]  Whitehall,et al.  The Customer Voice in Transforming Public Services , 2006 .

[9]  S. Haque,et al.  The Diminishing Publicness of Public Service under the Current Mode of Governance , 2001 .

[10]  W. Reinartz,et al.  The mismanagement of customer loyalty. , 2002, Harvard business review.

[11]  A. Hirschman,et al.  Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States , 1971 .

[12]  C. Hood,et al.  Sixteen ways to consumerize public services: Pick ‘n mix or painful trade‐offs? , 1996 .

[13]  Jane E. Fountain,et al.  Paradoxes of Public Sector Customer Service , 2001 .

[14]  J. Richard Alldredge,et al.  Transformational Government: Enabled By Technology , 2005 .

[15]  J. Grand.  Motivation, Agency, and Public Policy: Of Knights and Knaves, Pawns and Queens , 2003 .