A Study of Client Services in Australian and New Zealand Courts, Meeting the Needs of Court Users Whilst Supporting Service Providers
Abstract.
Client service is an integral part of court administration. It is expected that different courts with different jurisdictions and their different stakeholders may place different emphasis on the role that client service plays in the way the court operates. The research literature on service quality makes it clear that whilst there is perceived to be a direct relationship between how service organizations treat their client service staff and the quality of the service experienced by their clients it also makes it clear that this is by no means a simple or direct relationship [Schneider and White, 2004]. The marketing and service management research literature also highlight the wide range of other factors that have been found to influence the effectiveness of service organizations. This includes, but is not limited to, the attitude and competency of service staff, the ways in which services are delivered, where they are delivered, and the strategies, structures and systems that service organizations use to support these processes. All four objectives of the Court Safety Project readily lend themselves to an examination of the impact, planned and actual, that client services are seen to have on how lay court users experience the court system. This study looks at client services in a select number of Australian and New Zealand courts that deal with family-related matters. The study seeks to compare and contrast client support services across these courts in terms of the types of services that are delivered, how they are delivered, what things work, what things have the most impact in meeting user requirements and what the trends are for continuous improvement in service delivery in the foreseeable future. The results are expected to complement the Court Safety Project’s core findings about how users perceive courts in terms of people, places and processes.
Study Objectives
The Study of Client Services in Australian and New Zealand Courts, Meeting the Needs of Court Users Whilst Supporting Service Providers (hereafter titled the Client Services Study) is being undertaken amongst five organizations that are partners to the Court Safety Project. These are the Magistrates’ Court of Victoria; the Courts Administration Authority of South Australia, The Department of the Attorney General, Government of Western Australia; the Family Court of Australia and the Ministry of Justice, Government of New Zealand.
The Client Services Study has four formal objectives. The first is to describe client service policies, processes and practices that may affect safety and security for lay clients and staff. The second is to document the nature and type of the client services provided by courts that potentially impact on lay client and staff safety. The third is to identify policies, processes and practices associated with safer (or unsafe) court environments. The fourth is to identify trends and developments in the nature, type and delivery of client services in courts involving family-related matters that have the potential to impact upon the extent to which these services are seen to be effective in continuing to contribute to safer court environments. This Study is designed to complement the Court Safety Project.
The Court Safety Project entitled ‘Fortress or sanctuary? Enhancing court safety by managing people, places and processes’, and known by the abbreviated title of the ‘Court Safety Project’ itself has four objectives, presented below and depicted visually in relationship to the Client Services Study in Figure 1:
1. To identify actual and perceived safety needs of court user communities (‘stakeholders’).
2. To identify the features of court processes, practices and designs that contributes to safer court environments.
3. To measure the impact of changes to court processes, practices and designs on the safety of court environments.
4. To develop best practice guidelines for improving the safety environments of courts.
Figure 1 – Court Safety Project Aims
All four objectives of the Court Safety Project readily lend themselves to an examination of the impact, planned and actual, that client support services are seen to have on how lay court users experience the court system. The Client Services Study looks specifically at client support services in terms of the types of services that are delivered, how they are delivered, what things work, what things have the most impact in meeting user requirements and what the trends are for continuous improvement in service delivery in the foreseeable future.
Research Purpose and Research Questions
The Client Services Study is seen to have three research purposes as depicted in Figure 2 below. These are to identify service improvements that link directly or indirectly to lay clients and staff feeling safer whilst at court; to document trends and developments in the types of services being delivered and how they are being managed within and between partner organizations; and how this information might be seen to contribute to ‘best practice’ for facilitating safer court environments from a ‘client service’ perspective.
Figure 2
The Study Process
All courts amongst the partner organizations of the Court Safety Project are being encouraged to participate in the Client Services Study. The first step that has been taken has been to pilot the Study approach by focusing on two of five partner organizations, the Courts Administration Authority of South Australia and the Family Court of Australia. The study process piloted so far has involved analysing and summarising the contents of the partner organisation’s web sites and most recent annual reports, with specific reference to information on client support services. This information has then been modelling in terms of key service features; service features related to safer court environments and service initiatives and service-related issues that may impact on the future delivery of client support services. These documents have been provided to partner organization representatives and refined after a phone or face-to-face interview. Interviews have been held with Mr. Mark Stokes, the Sheriff of the Courts Administration Authority of South Australia and Mr. Simon Kelso, A/g Manager, HRM and Executive Adviser, Client Services, from the Family Court of Australia. Once feedback from these representatives on the information collected on their organizations has been received and feedback obtained from the Third Justice and Environment Conference, on the basic study approach, it is proposed that the remaining three court organizations that are partners to the Court Safety Project will be approached in a similar manner. It is expected that the data collection phase of the study will be completed by the end of June 2010.
Preliminary Observations
It should be noted that the versions of the maps presented in this paper have yet to be validated with the relevant partner organisation representatives so any interpretation placed upon them needs to be qualified.
The Map of Service Features for the Courts Administration Authority (CAA) is illustrated in Figure 3 below. It is understood that family-related matters are handled by all courts within the CAA portfolio to varying degrees depending upon the nature of each court and its jurisdiction. Figure 3 indicates a range of continuous improvement initiatives relating to the client support services offered by different courts to support improved access to judicial services. There is a clear emphasis on the improved use of technology and ensuring court staffs are better trained for their demanding roles.
Figure 3
Figure 4 provides a map of service features seen to be related to safer court environments amongst the courts in the CAA portfolio.
Figure 4
Stakeholder education is seen to be a two-way process of the judiciary actively engaging with and educating community representatives in a number of different ways and as a consequence the judiciary themselves being made more aware of how to adapt their processes to the special requirements of vulnerable client groups in particular communities (e.g. remote, indigenous, youth). Skills training amongst shopfront staff, call centre staff and security staff from the Sheriff’s Office, particularly relating to dealing with difficult clients, was seen to lead to safer and more efficient court environments. The improved use of a wide range of technology has and continues to offer a variety of ways of reducing risk, improving access and improving the efficiency of certain court processes. Finally the multi-skilling of Sheriff’s Officers in prisoner security, court management and precinct security offers the CAA greater flexibility when it is required to supplement the utilization of security contract staff in special circumstances.
Figure 5 illustrates a range of service-related initiatives and issues relating to the CAA portfolio. One interesting feature is the perceived shift in how service is viewed at a number of different levels within the courts. Another is the potential impact that economic constraint is likely to have in expanding the utilization of technology in service delivery. The third is a perceived `missing link’ between employee attitude surveys and customer satisfaction surveys. Schneider stated “most service organizations, separate their employee ‘attitude’ research from the customer ‘opinion’ research”, [Schneider, 1980, p56]. This appears to be true in practice.
Figure 5
A similar set of maps have been prepared for the Family Court of Australia. Figure 6 provides a map of the key service features. This indicates a clear integration of client service into strategy, governance, structure and organizational systems.
Figure 6
A distinct feature of the Family court appears to be the manner in which service is seen as integral to the mission, vision, values, strategies, structures, policies and practices of the organization.
Figure 7 provides a map of services directly or indirectly related to safer court environments.
Figure 7
The Family Court representative spoke about the double benefit of the introduction of enhanced physical security in the Family Courts. Once staff were able to rely on this security they were more amenable to the redesign of shopfront areas to make them more user friendly which in turn enables them to provide more effective support for their clients. In this way security and service are seen to be inter-twined.
A related initiative was the introduction of the Integrated Client Service Development Program which dealt with building capability amongst client service support staff across the Court’s 19 service locations. Finally the Family Court introduced a safety planning protocol which requires shopfront and call centre staff to engage with clients about perceptions of the potential for risk of family violence whilst they are at court and to ensure this is passed on to the relevant officers within the court.
Figure 8 provides a map of service-related initiatives and issues.
Figure 8
Some of the key themes that emerged that may impact on the future of service support within the court were the recent amalgamation of client support services amongst the Federal Magistrates Court the Federal Court and the Family Court. This in conjunction with fiscal constraints is seen to have a progressive impact on staff moral which may in turn lead to an impact on service effectiveness if not checked.
Trends in the Field of Service Research
Over the last forty years there has been a growing recognition of the complex nature of the range of factors influencing the service encounter from the perspective of the service provider and the client. Figure 10 below identifies some of the types of antecedents studied that have been found to influence service provider attitudes and the consequences that flow from the service encounter from a client and service provider perspective. The antecedents studied have included organisational culture and climate; HRM policies and practices; perceived organisational support; organisational justice; trust and leadership. Antecedents directly linked to the service provider’s job that have also been found to have an effect on the service provider attitudes and service behaviour include contact frequency, level of independence, role stress and emotional labour. The consequences of these factors influencing service providers and their clients that have been studied include prosocial behaviour [i.e. the phenomenon of people helping others with no thought of reward], job satisfaction, organisational commitment, task and contextual performance, and loyalty as well as other work-related behaviours such as staff turnover and absenteeism [Wetzels, de Ruyter, and Lemmink, 2000].
Figure 9
This research service management is complex, dynamic and situational specific. What is lacking from this is a holistic framework which can be used to examine the presence and strength of a range of related factors operating to influence the effectiveness of the service encounter.
A strong feature of service research over the last forty years has been the relationship between internal factors influencing the service experience and the way in which customers or clients perceive that experience [Schneider and White, 2004]. The service profit chain developed by Heskett et al, in 1994 is still cited as the rationale for why service organizations should focus on how they treat their service staff. Figure 9 below shows the relationship conceptualized in the service-profit chain.
Figure 10
The main limitation of this framework is it is based in the private sector where there are perceived to be a wider range of incentives to create both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation amongst service providers.
Perhaps the most prominent shift in academic and research thinking in relation to service has been the introduction of the concept of service-dominant logic [Vargo and Lusch, 2004, 2009]. In its essence this is about changing the perspective and the language used to describe the service concept moving away from the predominant product-dominant logic that has underpinned marketing research and practice for decades (i.e. the service-profit chain). A model entitled the service dominant logic triangle tries to capture the essence of this perspective [Figure 11 below refers].
Figure 11
The Service-Dominant Logic Triangle
This schema conveys that service value is an outcome of the interaction between service provider, service user and other relevant stakeholders, and the service organisation. It is based upon the central premise that while the service organization can unilaterally communicate a service value proposition, service value itself is co-created involving partnership between the service provider and service user. Further it conceives that interaction between service organization and service employee to be central to that value creation process. Evolution of thinking about service-dominant logic has led to its exponents establishing ten fundamental premises of service-dominant logic which can be summed into five distinguishing factors; the unit of exchange; the role of goods; the role of the customer; determination of the meaning of value; and firm-customer interaction.