THERE is a saying that if you are in business and you are not doing e-commerce, then you are not in business at all.
Perhaps we could transpose that saying to say that if you are in governance and you are not doing e-governance, then you are not in governance at all.
Well, that might sound like it is too much of a sweeping statement, but nonetheless it could be said that if you are in governance and you are not doing e-governance, then you do not really have good customer relations management (CRM) because nowadays, good public service could not be delivered without good customer relations and so therefore if a government agency does not have good customer relations, then it is not doing good governance at all.
In theory, elected officials are supposed to have higher ascendancy over appointed officials, and that is because of obvious reasons. However, since the elected officials get their mandate from the voters, they could not possibly have higher ascendancy over the citizens.
No matter how you look at it, the voters, citizens and taxpayers are in effect the customers of government agencies and because of that there is no excuse at all for both elected and appointed officials not to do CRM, regardless of whether they do it via the plain old ways, or via the new CRM software systems. I am saying that to deliver my point that the government employees do not even need software to do good CRM, but they would be negligent if they do not.
When I was Chairman of the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) Modernization Committee (jointly appointed by both the Senate and the Comelec), I made the point that we should be able to vote in the same manner that we bank.
As it is now, there are many ways of transacting with a bank. The usual way of course is to go to a branch to transact over the counter with a live teller. The other way is to transact by using an automated teller machine (ATM), either inside or outside a branch.
Within a branch, it is also possible to do private banking, which is really nothing more than being comfortably seated at the office of the branch manager, instead of dealing with a live teller. A variation of private banking is when a bank officer goes to the home or office of a preferred client. All of these options would fall under the category of IN PERSON banking.
Those who would rather not transact with the bank via IN PERSON services now have the option of dealing with the bank via VOICE services, and that could be done via a landline phone or a mobile phone. In case of the latter option, it could be done by using the default global standard for mobile (GSM) communication feature, or using any mobile app such as Viber, Skype, Face Time, Facebook Messenger or Yahoo Messenger.
Although it is not yet popularly used, it is also possible to transact with a bank by using a handheld push to talk (PTT) radio. There are also mobile apps that would enable two users to have the functionality of a PTT radio for as long as both users are connected to the internet.
Those who would rather not transact via IN PERSON services or via VOICE services also have the option now of dealing with the bank via NON-VOICE services via internet and mobile apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linked In. NON-VOICE services could also be accessed by using the older short messaging service (SMS) option and the newer multimedia messaging service (MMS) option.
What is good about the SMS option is that even very old legacy type mobile phones could be used. As it is now however, at least half of the mobile phones that are being used in the Philippines are already smartphones, using Iphone operating systems (IOS), Android operating systems or Windows Phone operating systems.
It is ironic to note that the Philippines is the call center capital of the world, but its own citizens could not even call its own government and be attended to by a call center, in the same way that many customers are now able to do it with private companies.
This is really nothing new, because very few government agencies have the facility to receive text messages, and reply to these messages, even if the Philippines also is the text messaging capital of the world. Very few government agencies maintain their Facebook accounts and if they do, they would really not answer with internet speed. Somehow, that has to change, and it seems that this change could happen soon.
There is also a saying that if you do e-commerce with a bad product, you will just be multiplying your problems, because you will have more problems with product returns and payment charge backs. The same saying would also apply to the government agencies, because if they have poor service while they are still not doing e-governance, they will just multiply their problems if they would now do e-governance while still having poor service.
In reality, internet and mobile are just additional means of delivering public services. Considering both the usual and the additional means, the bottom line is still the quality of the service. That said, it would be advisable for the government agencies to also do quality systems management (QSM), aside from doing CRM./PN
