Case Study – Bringing the customer’s voice to service delivery audits

How well an organisation manages customer complaints points to how committed it is to service delivery that meets people’s needs. To ensure its service delivery performance audits were citizen focused, the Office of the Auditor-General (OAG) needed to hear from those making complaints to two government agencies. Colmar Brunton was asked to help with this.

Many of the agencies’ clients are in especially vulnerable life situations, for example, we spoke with people suffering from post-traumatic disorder and others struggling to make ends meet. Capturing the experiences of these clients and the challenges they face was critical. By observing and engaging with clients in a sensitive way, we identified the main drivers of satisfaction with the complaints processes and strategic directions on how to improve them.

Our learnings were used to complement other information in the OAG’s service delivery audit reports tabled in Parliament.