Citizen‘s Charter

Assessing service quality – the benefits and limits of different assessment methods

Elke Löffler and Salvador Parrado

Which assessment tool to choose?

Which quality assessment approach to choose? (1)

• Self-assessment by public agencies
• Gets ownership but can be myopic and selfdeluding
• Unlikely to be trusted by other stakeholders
• External assessment by ‘auditors/inspectors’
• Independent but not always trusted by the agency
• Asks ‘hard questions’ but little understanding of context?
• Either superficial or expensive

Which quality assessment approach to choose? (2)

• Peer review by similar organisations
• Independent but “critical friends” may want to be polite rather than too critical
• Well-informed judgements by experts working in similar contexts
• Comments likely to be taken seriously by the agency
• Effectiveness of benchmarking clubs etc. depends on how structured their approach is (see peer review process of Improvement and Development Agency in the UK)
• Can be embedded into ongoing learning relationship between the agency and its partner agencies
• 360° appraisal by relevant stakeholders
• Independent
• Diversity of judgements
• Results likely to be seen as important by the agency
• Varying levels of understanding of the context
• Can be embedded into ongoing learning relationship between the agency and its stakeholders

Success factors

• Do not rely solely on repeat self-assessments
• Bring in a professional external auditor from time to time (e.g. certified EFQM assessor)
• Ask your stakeholders (actual and potential clients, politicians, business, etc.) about their perceptions of service quality
• Form a team with colleagues from other organisations to carry out peer reviews and to discuss solutions to identified problems

The EFQM – CAF Model as an assessment framework

Exercise: Get started with a focused self-assessment

• Evaluate the customer-orientation of your organisation against the criteria of the Charter Mark Self-Assessment Tool
• Invite some colleagues of the charter project team to come to your organisation to have their views on the way you deliver services and the results they produce
• Start collecting data so that you can assess how your organisation performance against the defined targets