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Presented
at the California WateReuse Association conference in San Francisco on February
28, 2003
CRM (Community
Relationship Management),
ESSENTIAL ELEMENT
TO SUCCESSFUL RECYCLED WATER PROJECTS
Mark Millan, Data
Instincts, Windsor, CA
In a world where
people cannot wait long for anything and demand excellence in everything,
presenting a community with the task of evaluating a water or recycled water use
project can be a tough prospect. Under the thumb of regulators, tight budgets
and CEQA, successfully implementing any project becomes an unprecedented
challenge.
Public education
may not seem to be a likely place to start but just imagine if the public,
policymakers, and your local media really understood that there was a problem to
begin with and actually agreed with you about potential solutions.
Fairy tale?
Defining
the Problem
Is the problem you
are faced with obvious? Easily understood? Would it be clear to a high school
student? If not, reevaluate how the problem is presented until it resonates.
Test its resoluteness with various community members. Use focus groups if
necessary. Focus groups and/or surveys can reveal key concerns or
misunderstandings early in the process. Such input can be pivotal as you craft
your outreach messages and information.
If the problem
does not seem real or urgent enough, stakeholders and affected public,
businesses and the community-at-large may not understand what the fuss is all
about, nor agree with new rates or water use practices.
It is tough to
gather support and to ask that others make sacrifices including possible rate
increases, if the problem to be solved is not crystal clear to all concerned.
Don’t assume
everyone understands recycled water quality, various levels of treatment or
applicable regulations. Educating the public and providing adequate background
information will help the public to understand what may be obvious to your staff
engineers.
Once a Problem
Statement has been crafted, and does indeed connect with your public, post it
everywhere. Keep it out front--refer to it often. Don’t assume everyone knows
or has remembered, especially if it is a project that may take years to put into
operation.
What
are Possible Solutions?
Whatever the
problem, there is likely to be more than one solution. How did the solutions get
formed? Are you involving the public and stakeholders in the process of
establishing potential solutions? If not, you may want to back track and be able
to explain how possible solutions evolved. Explain cost benefits, environmental
impacts and what percentage of a problem they may solve. Sometimes a combination
of solutions can be as effective as one giant project.
Solutions are
often not simple. Outside consultants may be required to make evaluations. Are
their findings available to the public and in a language they can understand?
Taking this extra step can alleviate gross misunderstandings.
Keeping
Stakeholders in the Loop
Weather it is a
Negative Declaration or a full-blown EIR, once your process begins, identify key
stakeholders and include them in your outreach efforts.
It is always best to be upfront and clearly state broad impacts.
Advertise initial meetings in the newspaper and mail to lists of interested
like-type issues or projects. Mail to entire affected geographic areas.
Better to over notice than under notice in the initial phases of a study
or implementing a project.
You don’t want
people standing up in front of a public hearing 9 months into the process saying
they never heard about your project. Better to have the confidence of your
policymakers knowing you threw the net out very broadly to make sure potentially
affected segments of the community were more than adequately notified about your
project.
What
About Johnny-Come-Lately?
Regardless of how
much you notice or how many public meetings you may have, there will always be
newcomers to your process or project. Someone may have just moved into the area
or just realized you are coming through their property. It is best to have
background beginning materials that lay out how the problem and subsequent
project evolved. These could be used all through a project as new people become
aware and require initial information. Have key contact information readily
available for public officials and project coordinators for people who feel they
need more information.
Content
is King
A
glossary of terms, a definition of a law or regulation, web links to new
legislation--there will always be something new to explain whether it is a newly
listed endangered specie or a water treatment process. Don’t expect everyone
to know what it is or means. Explain it. Have in-depth reference information
readily available.
Always be
forthright and demonstrate a commitment to full disclosure.
Decisions will be
tough enough to make without there being feelings of distrust or confusion on
fundamental data.
No
Turning Back - CRM is the New Mantra
In developing public
projects, the old rule of “Decide, Announce, and Defend” is over. The public
expects to have input, be kept informed and updated.
A new bar has already been set in the private sector. Enterprise-wide
software and communications systems are now a standard to better deliver
services and products to a company’s customers. These enterprise-wide systems
are often referred to as "Customer Centric" because they can provide
information "responsively" to customers from numerous customer contact
points. When a customer calls, they can respond with real-time information
unique to that customer. This type of delivery system, in the private sector, is
called Customer Relationship Management
(CRM).
It improves the customer’s experience of dealing with that company,
enhances the services, manages the relationship, and allows for meaningful
interaction thereby providing unique treatment and responsiveness to each
individual customer.
In the public
sector, it is possible to mirror this same type of functionality within your
outreach structure. New tools tailored to cities and counties are being
developed and implemented. Such
systems can be referred to as Community
Relationship Management (CRM).
Because citizens are also
consumers, they have come to expect 24 hour-a-day service and interactive
delivery systems. Recycled water projects, in particular, can be politically
charged and controversial as to public safety concerns and perceptions. They are
ideal candidates for CRM and can
best benefit from improved channels of communication to help ensure a sense of
trust between the public and the lead agency of a project. More importantly, the
public and stakeholders now expect that a public project WILL
be responsive and provide full disclosure. When
this expectation is not met, they begin to question the very competency and
integrity of the implementing agency and their contracted partners.
A reliable communications
and educational system can be
as vital to a project as a reliable recycled water system itself.
New
Questions to Ask
-
Do you have a strategy
for improving the way you interact with the community/citizens during the
various phases of a project?
-
What interaction channels
are most cost effective in enabling you to deal with the public and
stakeholders?
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What do you need to know
about those who may be impacted to ensure you are able to offer the most
appropriate service and interactive channels of communication?
-
Are you able to provide
consistent service and consistent responses to the public and stakeholders
no matter what interaction channel they choose?
-
Have you introduced new
channels of interaction with proper support and trained staffing?
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Are there any weaknesses
in your interactive communications system that could be strengthened?
Make
Communications Easy and Available in Various Ways
By creating
various channels to disburse and receive information, you make it easy to deal
with and appear responsive to the community and stakeholders. Channels of
communication may vary in different communities. Here are a few that would be
ideal and are actually expected today:
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Printed
Materials:
Backgrounders, maps and project documents
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Project
Website: Posting
background information, schedules, maps, key documents and online modeling
tools
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Public
Meetings: Where either
policymakers are discussing and making key decisions and/or information is
shared, gathered and exchanged with the public and key stakeholders
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Permission
based E-mail Broadcasts: Keeps
those most interested constantly in the loop.
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Project
Call Center:
This could be as simple as a specific telephone number that everyone knows
as the resource number that can be called day or night to ask project
questions, or alert you to problems in the field.
Technology
Should be Your Best Friend
You
might say it is tough enough to conduct environmental, technical and economic
studies to build a recycle water project - now I also have to have a
sophisticated communications system in place? If you want your project to
succeed, the answer is “Yes.”
City, County and State governments
are being affected by the one-to-one marketing trend provided consumers in other
service industries. The community expects easy access, 24/7 communications
options just like working with an airline or a bank. There are software tools
available to help you deliver such services thereby making it easier for
citizens to fill out forms, get answers to questions and to be kept informed of
public meetings and key decision points. Use of new technologies such websites, website interactive tools,
permission based e-mail broadcast and intelligent databases can enhance
communication with citizens and stakeholders.
Websites
Work for you 24 Hours a Day, 7 Days a Week
A
website dedicated to your current project and its EIR process, design and/or
construction phases could be a link to your existing homepage, or a fresh URL
with a series of Web pages dedicated just to your recycled water project.
Clearly state the project purpose, note a schedule of events and important
public meetings, and make available key reports and studies. The site can also
be a place where dialogue can occur. People
can talk directly to you and your consultants or have a forum where questions
can be asked as the process unfolds. In addition, if there are maps involved,
various mapping concepts could be posted and made readily available to everybody
involved in the process.
A
database and a project Website combined will help to reinforce traditional forms
of outreach, such as notification mailings, feedback reports, surveying,
important documents in draft and final stages and any legally required notices.
Permission
Based E-mail Broadcast
Respect privacy
when using this channel. Do not show e-mail addresses to the full group. The
best place to gather e-mail addresses and permission is at public meetings using
sign-in sheets. Another clear method is via your project website where an
interested party can request information be e-mailed to them.
You can also
create subset groups, depending on the subject matter, such as technical groups,
public officials, and/or people from a specific geographic area. There are many
ways that this communication method could be utilized.
Power
of a Call Center
A
Call Center can serve many purposes. Callers
can receive clarity on an issue, request documents and obtain scheduling
information. Whoever answers this phone needs to be familiar with the project
and key stakeholders to effectively respond and route calls to appropriate
project team members. A Call Center is a “learning center.” It allows you to
have one-on-one conversations with people who may have unique viewpoints, key
information or who may be adversely affected by your project. Sharing this
information with key team members can help in critical time-sensitive
decision-making and can even reshape ideas. Listening to public reaction and
adjusting your outreach materials can prevent large-scale misunderstandings.
Feeding citizen and stakeholder input into a project database allows for such
information to stay relevant over time and to be shared across the spectrum of
project team members as the project evolves. This is a simple idea that can be
very powerful.
Utilizing
a Smart Database
A
project database allows you to record a history of each individual's interaction
with a process. You can note
meetings attended, documents sent, and records of telephone and e-mail dialogue.
More importantly, it ensures that the right people receive the right information
throughout the project, and you have a record of it.
Starting
with your current mailing list, the database might have various segments
depicted based on interest or impact, such as: agriculture, traffic, utilities,
technology, tourism and business. Unique
outreach messages could then be sent to these segments, as various topics need
to be addressed. Additional interests are easily added. Sorting by category,
geographic areas, level of interests, and alphabetically now becomes possible.
Such a database can also note preferences on how each individual prefers to
receive information, either by mail, email, fax, or phone.
Studies have shown an increase in response to messages sent through a
person's preferred channel of communicating.
Best
yet is being able to share this information across a network for use by key
members of your project team. Such access allows full use of the data for a
myriad of uses such as quick mailing to one sector of a project or key
stakeholders. Retain Right of Way data so commitments can be retained through
the live and phases of large-scale projects that take years to build.
Successful
Recycled Water Projects of the Future
Successful
recycled water projects of the future will be using all of these channels of
communication and more for the simple reason that the public will demand and
insist on them. Just as in the private sector, competition drove such services
and caused them to evolve; public projects have also begun feeling this impact.
Recycled water projects should not and cannot ignore them. Adopting such
practices early on will alleviate public frustrations and create a better
atmosphere of trust. It is already tough enough to sell, design and build
recycled water projects. Improved communications, public education, and informed
stakeholders who feel they have been responded to, should smooth the way and
enhance a more successful outcome.
Great
Examples of Good Use of Web Sites Dedicated to Specific Public Projects
References
-
Shine,
Sean, “Building Customer Relationship Management in Government”,
Insights--Accenture, Issue No. 6, January 2002, p 2
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Goldenberg,
Barton J., “CRM Automation”, pp 157-160
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Kimberlee
Roth, “Stemming
the Flow--CRM
Helps Santa Rosa, CA Keep Track of Citizens Affected by its Pipeline
Project”, Marketing
1to1,
January/February 2001
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