Customer Service

I was chatting with a group of MPA students in a course on Public Management and the topic of customer service in government came up. One of the students, who was an Assistant to the City Manager at a medium-sized municipality -  asked - “if you could make one recommendation to my city related to customer service what would that be?” Not one to always color within the lines, I said I would have two, and I also said we would crowdsource everyone’s top item for a healthy, robust list. My (somewhat tongue in check) primary - please do not have a phone tree in your city. Give me a live, non robotic, city employee when I take the time to call City Hall. Once we discussed the pros and cons of unnecessarily ticking off residents who might be calling on a complaint and, thus, already a little on edge - I moved on to my real #1. Assess your internal customer service, first. Yes, counterintuitive a little - I am often the contrarian viewpoint on matters in this realm. Appraise the performance, methods, styles, communication practices, interactions, and the like - of the offices and departments/divisions that serve other city departments. Payroll, IT, the manager’s office, the Clerk, the legal department, etc., How are we serving our own fellow employees? Sort of being able to take care of the baby’s mask on the plane before we help others.