ACCAN Customer Service Project (25 August 2009)

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3.1. International

The first high profile customer service charters emerged in the United Kingdom in the early 1990s. Activity in the UK peaked in the late 1990s with a requirement for every government agency to have a service charter. However, interest in service charters has subsequently waned, and the requirement for UK Government agencies to have a service charter is no longer in place. This has now been replaced by a customer service standard and the use of an audited service mark (a tick that appears on websites). Only a small number of service charters remain in place in the UK, mainly in the local government sector.

There was a period of limited activity in Canada regarding service charters, where they were implemented by both private sector and public sector organisations between 1998 and 2004. Very few examples remain in use today.

In the United States there has been a moderate level of interest in service charters for the private sector since the early 2000s. The private sector is very lightly regulated and service charters are sometimes used as a means of differentiating an organisation from its competitors. However, there is some evidence of a consumer backlash against service charters in the US – as the presence of customer service charters did not always translate into improved customer service, resulting in concerns about wasted resources and missed opportunities. The following post is a good summary of the concerns expressed during this period:

Too many organizations ‘commit’ to customer service and then, instead of putting effort into actually understanding their customers’ needs and meeting them, the effort goes into ‘spinning’ customer service. Hence overblown job titles, wordy customer service charters and more hollow statements of commitment than the average election campaign.[9]

There are some examples of customer service charters in other jurisdictions, but it is difficult to assess how these may be relevant to Australia (e.g. Tanzania). Overall there is no global movement or trend towards the use of service charters, and the period of greatest activity has now passed. There are also no current international examples of a requirement to have a service charter, and there are no current service charter templates or guidelines in place in other jurisdictions.

The following table summarises the peak periods of international activity on customer service charters.

  

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[9] D Brewster, ‘Customer service is simpler - so why so rare?’, David Brewster – Clarity in words, Victoria, 20 November 2007, <http://www.davidbrewster.com/2007/11/20/customer-service-is-simple-so-why-so-rare/>.

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