Citizen‘s Charter

Workshop: Defining your key stakeholders

Objective of this session
Some departments or organizational units may have several services, each with distinct client groups. Consequently, an agency may have one or several charters. It is important to determine at the very beginning of the charter pilot programme which group of clients are likely to benefit most from the development of a charter. Research shows that individual and institutional customers may have different needs and may value services differently.

Actual Customers
Individualised service is essential when dealing with customers on a one-to-one basis. Moreover, a dialogue with the service providers creates positive perceptions about the service. Individual customers will have different expectations and needs, based on their age, gender, education level and other demographic characteristics.

Potential customers
There may be groups of customers who are currently not using the services of your agency extensively for various reasons, e.g. because of access problems. It is important to identify these groups and to consult with them to learn how your agency could help them.

General public
Even though your agency may only interact with a specific group of clients, the expectations; needs and perceptions of these clients can be strongly influenced by the community where they live (e.g. children from disadvantaged areas are more likely to improve their school performance if their parents take an interest in their school work). Again, your service may have a wider impact in the community - e.g. poor schools may make it harder for local business to recruit good quality trainees.

For all these reasons, it is important to have a clear picture of who your major stakeholders are, how interested they are in what you do, and how much power they have over you. This will help you to decide how best to engage with them.

Exercise
Each individual group member should Identify the major stakeholder groups which have an impact on her/his service(s) or on which these services have an impact. Each stakeholder group should be allocated into the boxes in the table (see next page).

In group discussion, compare the results from different members of the group and try to identify any patterns which emerge from these different results in the group.