Singapore, Canada and United States Rated Best in Delivering on Promise of Government Customer Service

The governments of Singapore, Canada and the United States do the best job of delivering on the promise of customer service, according to a global research report released today by Accenture. The report, Leadership in Customer Service: Delivering on the Promise, is the eighth in a series of annual reports from Accenture that examine the customer-service challenges, maturity and practices of governments around the world.

This year's report marks the return to a ranking of 22 governments based on an assessment of their customer-service programs, but with an important enhancement. For the first time the rankings incorporate direct citizen feedback to assess more accurately the quality of government service delivery, reflecting input on criteria such as the user-friendliness of customer-service channels, the breadth and depth of online services accessed by citizens, and overall citizen satisfaction ratings.

The 22 countries included in the report are Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United States, and United Kingdom.

Accenture also interviewed 52 government executives in 17 countries to understand their visions for the future, their current priorities and their lessons learned from past experiences. All of this feedback was analyzed and incorporated into the country rankings and key findings contained in the report.

"Singapore and Canada continue to lead the world in terms of customer service maturity, as they have in previous country rankings," said David T. Roberts, executive director of customer relationship management in Accenture's Government Operating Group. "Each continues to evolve its customer service strategies with an eye toward continuous improvement in each of the four key areas we identified in this year's report: knowing the customer, making the connections, aligning your people, and not doing it alone. Moreover, Singapore and Canada do the best job of educating their citizens on their customer service initiatives, which results in more favorable citizen perceptions."

Overall, Singapore leads the first tier of country rankings in the report -- which includes services ranging from taxes to community centers to pensions -- followed closely by Canada, which held the No. 1 position in the last country rankings, in 2005. Both countries have strong and compelling visions of value-led, citizen-centric service. With citizens' opinions given substantial weight in this