Providing Service Quality to a Nation

Abstract

Service quality in a monopolistic national welfare system? Who gains when improvements are made? Argues that ultimately the customer – every citizen – wins if system efficiencies allow the processes to be handled quicker, cheaper, and better. It cannot be in a nation’s interest to delay or overspend on money which it must first extract in taxes before reallocating as benefits. Britain’s benefits system entered life early, to the envy of much of the world. But early entrants in any environment suffer in maturity through inefficiencies, as their later peers start from a higher technological base. A recently published book by I. Fallon, The Paper Chase, records the £1.8 billion project undertaken by just one section of that system, Britain’s Department of Social Services, as it sought to streamline and improve the service it provides to its “customers” – who, even when the story begins in 1982, when the Department’s predecessor was using a very outdated manual system to pay out over £1 billion each week – numbered over 20 million people.

Citation

Evans, R. (1994), "Providing Service Quality to a Nation", Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, Vol. 4 No. 1, pp. 28-30. https://doi.org/10.1108/09604529410796026