Article Review Example: The Otawa Way Thrives

Vanderberg, A., Capodagli, B. (2015). The Otawa Way thrives. Public Management, 97(6), 14-18

It is important for every business organization to provide quality customer service. It is an essential practice that plays a significant function in current business societies. There are some businesses which have no need to use customer centric approach to influence customer behavior. In this article, Vanderberg and Capodagli are concerned about the use of customer centric approach in Ottawa County, Michigan to increase the quality of services they provide to their citizen (Vanderberg and Capodagli, 2015). The article also discusses the benefits they expect to get from employing customer centric approach in Ottawa County in all the local Government departments. Ottawa County offered three-day training to its employees on the benefit of using customer centric culture and asks the employees to have a change of mind on the current government system.

Article Summary

Ottawa County is offers a three day training programs for its employees to discuss the benefits of using customer centric culture. The training was to urge the employees to change their mind on the current management system but to adopt customer service approach when offering their services to the public (Reinartz, et al, 2004). All the employees agreed that there are a lot of benefits that the county will gain from adopting customer service approach when delivering public services although there is disconnect between public sector and Disney customer service culture. The authors of this article explained how the use of customer service approach in public sector can improve service to the people by even offering incentives in order to gain high reputation. The authors argue that by adopting customer service, the Ottawa County will attract many people, businesses and investors that will improve its economic condition by investing and doing business with it. Through the adoption of customer service, employment opportunities also increase in the county to help new businesses execute their duties. All these benefits can only be gained from implementing customer centric culture in Ottawa County. It adopted the same customer service initiative used by Disney Company

Critical Reflection

This article is written in a manner that can easily be understood by many readers. It highlights key issues which led to the need of introducing customer service in Ottawa County Michigan. The author of this article is very categorical by specifying what customer service can do to different organizations such Government. The introduction part of this article is very interesting as the authors start it with a question, does it really make a difference if a local government adopts customer service? This approach of writing makes the readers to seek more information from the article and develop more willingness to read. The author also uses simple and well structured sentences which are easy to understand. From the article one can easily to depict the importance of customer service approach as explained by the author. From the article, the authors also explained in details how the training program was conducted on the benefits of customer service. In their explanation Disney was used as an illustration. There are few areas where the authors have failed to address properly. They over dwelled on the training of employees and the description and location of Ottawa County but failed to focus on need for customer service and its benefits. I therefore believe that the improvement of such areas can make this article more perfect.

Conclusion

This article addresses the need for using customer service approach in public sector. It is mainly focused on Ottawa County, Michigan. The article explained in details the need and benefits which the county is likely to get from adopting customer service. From the article, one can easily denote that customer service can increase the reputation of Ottawa County by attracting new businesses and investors to invest in the county thus improving the economic condition of the county.

References

Vanderberg, A., Capodagli, B. (2015). The Otawa Way thrives. Public Management, 97(6), 14-18

Reinartz, D.et al (2004). "The Customer Relationship Management Process: Its Measurement and Impact on Performance".Journal of Marketing Research. 41 (3): 293305.