Following is the speech by the Secretary for the Civil Service, Mr Joseph W P Wong, in a luncheon talk at the Lok Sin Tong Benevolent Society on "Promoting a Customer Service Culture in the Civil Service" on November 2 :

Dr Li, Ladies and Gentlemen

It is my great pleasure to be invited to this luncheon today. I would like to share with you what the Civil Service has been doing to promote a customer service culture in the delivery of public service.

Ten years ago, we seldom talked about customer service in the Civil Service. This was not surprising as the emphasis at the time was on the public sector providing the community with the essential services it needed and any talk of customer service was more associated with the commercial sector. Things have changed. Customer service is now widely practised in the Civil Service. As Hong Kong becomes an international city and a major business centre, our community has become better educated and well informed, leading to a much higher expectation of civil servants than before. Members of the public, including the media, are increasingly mindful of the services they are getting and will not be satisfied with the bare provision of service.

Against this background, the Government has, over the years, worked hard towards building up in the Civil Service a culture that recognises the public as the paying customers and treats them accordingly. Providing quality customer service is now one of the Government's most important goals to which all civil servants should be committed.

Making performance pledges

Since 1992, all government departments directly serving the public have published performance pledge annually, informing their customers what services are available, what the standards are and how these standards are monitored and met. The aim is to ensure that the Government provides the best possible services to the public and to help engender a culture of service which regards the public as customers. This greatly enhances the transparency as the public can better understand the standards to be expected. The performance pledges are updated annually to ensure that they reflect the customers' needs and expectations, with the aim to achieve continuous improvement in the quality of service provided. To date over 60 departments publish their performance pledges annually.

Promotion of a Customer Service Culture by the Civil Service Bureau

Since early 1990's, the Civil Service Bureau has launched a customer service programme to encourage civil servants to place more weight on serving customers, better understand their needs and improve the efficiency and quality of service and timeliness of response. I would like to outline the major initiatives of the programme and how they contribute towards building up a customer-focused service culture in the Civil Service.

Developing Vision, Mission and Values

We encourage departments to include some reference to quality service in the process of developing their Vision, Mission and Values statements. So far, about 90% of departments have published their Vision, Mission and Value statements which feature the elements of caring and customer-focus. To quote a few examples, we have "Caring from the Hearts" from the Hongkong Post and "Caring, Customer-focused and Committed" from the Housing Department.

Improving physical environment

To enable departments to upgrade their services, the Civil Service Bureau provided funds to departments to embark on projects to uplift the physical environment of offices which provide direct service to the public. These projects included enlargement of public waiting areas, renovation of public enquiry counters, provision of directory signs and improvement of telephone enquiry service. We have, since 1993, allocated some $30 million to 48 departments for more than 200 projects.

Central financial support for projects to promote quality customer service

We have provided financial support to departments to conduct projects geared to promote customer service and to educate staff on customer-oriented attitude. Since 1998-99, about $10 million have been disbursed to over 40 departments for 84 projects, which include launching customer satisfaction surveys; organising seminars to promote awareness and to share experience on customer service; producing video and other self-learning packages to enhance the standard of public services; and publishing publicity material to introduce to the public the quality services that departments deliver.

Enhancing work process

Many departments have encouraged their staff to set up Work Improvement Teams to identify and suggest the changes that are needed to improve their services. These teams, which are of varying size with staff at different levels, review existing operational procedures and identify areas for enhancement. They often come forward with creative and innovative ideas to provide a more cost-effective and professional customer service.

Involving the Customer

No matter how hard we work to achieve quality customer service, our efforts will be worthless if we do not know what our customers need and expect. Feedback from customers is therefore a useful tool for us to evaluate whether we are moving in the right direction, to make changes and to improve.

Many departments conduct customer opinion surveys on a regular basis to ascertain how satisfied their customers are with the level and standard of services. In addition to surveys, a number of departments have established Customer Liaison Groups which meet customers periodically to discuss service improvements and allow customers to express their views. About 30 departments have set up such groups, which provide very useful feedback on how the performance and service standards should be further enhanced. Through this forum, customers are also made aware of the constraints and difficulties encountered by the service providers.

Training

Training is another key element in developing staff competency in service quality. A department cannot deliver quality customer service unless its staff are equipped with the attitude and skills and are highly committed to this understanding. We provide, through the Civil Service Training and Development Institute and departmental training units, on-going customer service training to front-line staff. More than 58 000 officers have already been trained. In addition to classroom training, a cyber learning centre has been launched to provide civil servants with anywhere-anytime access to a wide variety of learning resources through the Internet, from which they can learn how to be positive, helpful and courteous.

Securing staff commitment

The public judge the quality of service by personal experience which is largely determined by their contact with civil servants, very often the front-line staff. Staff attitude and commitment is thus crucial to providing quality service that the public expect. To develop staff commitment, many departments have designed different awards to recognise outstanding customer service at departmental level.

At the central level, the Civil Service Bureau has introduced a service-wide Customer Service Award Scheme since 1999 to further promote a customer-oriented service culture in the Civil Service and to give recognition to colleagues who provide good customer service, with a view to motivating them to enhance their efforts in this area. The scheme has received very favourable response from both staff and departments, attracting hundreds of nominations for entry. We take the opportunity to bring in input from professional bodies, experts in the private sector and District Councilors in the adjudication process. Apart from the prize presentation ceremony, we organise exhibitions to showcase the services of government departments and seminars for the winners to exchange their experience with other civil servants.

Customer Service Excellence Award

The Customer Service Award Scheme has now come to its third year. Twenty-eight departments have enrolled to compete for the "Customer Service Excellence Award", to be given out to those departments which have excelled in quality customer service. For the first time, members of the public are involved in the adjudication process. Last week, we invited 30 000 sampled households to select the best departments in a questionnaire survey. A large-scale exhibition on the services provided by the 28 entry departments and other government departments will be held in the Hong Kong Central Library from 1 to 5 February 2002. I suggest you keep this in mind and visit the exhibition with your family members.

Conclusion

A lot have been done and achieved by the Government over the years in building up a customer service culture. Providing good customer service is now a common task of all civil servants. This does not mean we are content. We pledge that we will continue to do our best to enhance the quality of our services to meet the community's aspiration.

Thank you.

Friday, November 2, 2001