A drive to improve citizen services is part of a long-term push by the U.S. government to be more responsive to taxpayer needs and to diminish its unresponsive, bureaucratic image. This push began during the Clinton administration and has continued through President Bush's tenure.
Now, the U.S. Census Bureau has revealed it has turned to a hosted-CRM
solution from RightNow Technologies (Nasdaq: RNOW) 
to increase its responsiveness.
Seven months ago, RightNow began working with the Census Bureau to improve handling of citizen inquiries. According to RightNow, the bureau primarily selected its CRM offering because it could be deployed quickly. The RightNow hosted-delivery system went live at the agency just two weeks after completion of an initial pilot.
Same as an Enterprise
David Hybels, a program manager 
at Allen Bonde Group, a CRM and
self-service management consultancy, explained to CRM Buyer that government
organizations like the Census Bureau are not much different from large businesses
that receive a high number of phone and e-mail inquiries and that can achieve
significant cost savings by allowing technology to handle their
communications with customers. In the case of government
agencies, change "customers" to "citizens" and you have
a similar equation.
The Census Bureau uses most of the core functionality of RightNow's multichannel contact center solution -- voice integration, Web self-service and voice self-service -- to manage incoming phone calls, e-mails and its Web site, according to Steve Nesenblatt, director of the public-sector group at RightNow.
At this point, the Bureau is not releasing any statistics on call volumes or the number of accesses to its RightNow knowledge base. But Nesenblatt said in an interview with CRM Buyer that another government site using a RightNow system serves up 1.5 million answers per month from its knowledge base.
Overall, he added, there is a general initiative within the federal government to become more responsive. However, as yet, there simply is not sufficient funding.
Speedy Responses
Visitors began using the census.gov site's online knowledge base as soon as it became available. This reduced the Bureau's volume of phone calls and e-mails. The hosted system also allowed the agency to filter out the simplest and most repetitive questions, freeing up its staff to spend more time responding to questions requiring individualized replies.
Bureau staff members also could help customers who called in by directing them to a specific knowledge-base document during the call. This ensured that customers completed their transactions without leaving the site -- and also taught them to use the online knowledge base for their next visit.
Nesenblatt acknowledged that the government's use of CRM is different from that of an enterprise. "Mostly, they want to serve a caller, then go away," he said. "There is little desire for developing loyalty, cross-selling or upselling."
One thing government sites using RightNow technology do get, he noted, is a sense of the "question of the day" -- a sort of snapshot of citizen opinion and concern.
Businesslike Behavior
However, perhaps because it more closely mirrors the commercial world than many government institutions, the Census Bureau seems to be taking a more enterprise-like stance. After all, the agency does possess mission-critical information for businesses, including demographics and market segmentation.
Businesses large and small depend on this data to better understand the complexities of their markets and, in some cases, to survive. The Census Bureau, perhaps unsurprisingly, sells some of its data.
"It's not a profit center," explained Nesenblatt, "but it makes every effort to recover its costs."
In CRM We Trust?
While acknowledging that privacy is an issue, Paul Greenberg, president of The 56 Group and author of "CRM at the Speed of Light," said he feels hopeful about the increased use of CRM by government agencies. "If the government is more responsive, that encourages citizens to believe in it, and that helps erase the cynicism dominating our view of government since Watergate," he said.
Greenberg told CRM Buyer that state, local and federal governments currently view CRM as "citizen relationship management" -- too narrow a view of what it does. Instead, he believes agencies should treat CRM more broadly, as "constituent relationship management," to help restore consumer trust by emphasizing the responsiveness of government institutions to the citizenry.
Allen Bonde Group's Hybels concurred, saying that as government agencies
continue to adopt customer-service automation technology, citizens will
become more satisfied with their experience -- and that, in turn, will
save taxpayers money. Twenty years ago, we could only imagine
efficient government bureaucracies. This is no longer a
dream, but a reality, he said.
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