Researchers critical: Citizens are not customers – creating skewed expectations

The Swedish Public Employment Service has recently stopped calling job seekers “customers”. Is the Swedish Enforcement Authority going the same way, or is the customer concept still used for indebted citizens?

– Many people don’t want to deal with us for obvious reasons. As crown inspectors, we carry out coercive measures that make people’s lives more difficult, so it is difficult to see them as customers.

This is what researcher and former Crown Inspector Henrik Edlund said when Esbri spoke with him in connection with his doctoral thesis just over two years ago. In his research, he studied how the Swedish Enforcement Authority relates to the customer perspective and how it is dealt with and handled by the operational officials – i.e. the Crown Inspectors.

– My research shows that the concept of the customer and the motto “the customer is always right” is problematic for the crown inspectors when they are out with citizens to collect assets.

The results also show that the customer concept leads to an increased distance between management and crown inspectors and that the latter often take management’s demands with a “pinch of salt”.

– When trust is not there, it is difficult to get staff to act as management wants. This is serious for an authority, said Henrik Edlund.

Undesirable effects

The customer concept is part of the larger wave of reforms that washed over Sweden in the late 1990s, where New Public Management was supposed to replace bureaucracies and inefficiencies in the government sphere. The aim was to make government agencies more efficient, reduce costs and increase public trust. But in practice, it has often led to undesirable effects, such as an excessive focus on measurable outcomes and control systems rather than on the quality of government.

– One example is the police, where quantitative targets could lead to simpler crimes being prioritized, as they were easier to ‘solve’ statistically, explains Magnus Blomgren, associate professor of political science at Umeå University.

Several “customers” to deal with

Henrik Edlund’s dissertation identified major structural problems with the concept of customer within the Swedish Enforcement Authority. With the entrepreneurial logic as a starting point, an organization should be responsive to the “customer’s” needs. At the same time, the customer often wants something completely different from what the law says. The Enforcement Authority must also be a neutral party.

– It becomes problematic there too. Crown inspectors often have both an applicant and a respondent in a case, so we actually have a customer on each side to deal with, said Henrik Edlund.

Employment Service stops calling job seekers customers

Recently, Maria Hemström Hemmingsson, Director General of the Swedish Public Employment Service, said that they will stop using the word customer to refer to employers and jobseekers. She told Swedish Radio:

– When it comes to job seekers, they also have obligations. These are not customers. We are not sales people, we are civil servants.

According to Magnus Blomgren, New Public Management has had some positive effects, such as authorities beginning to see the citizen in a new way and unnecessary bureaucracy being questioned.

– But on the whole, the system has led to perverse incentives and it is now necessary to find a more balanced governance model, he says, referring to the more trust-based governance that Sweden is now moving towards.

– Instead of micromanaging and controlling employees, you should trust them to do their job professionally, says Magnus Blomgren.

Kronofogden continues with the customer concept

The Director General of the Swedish Enforcement Authority has declined to comment on whether the authority has taken on board Henrik Edlund’s research. Instead, the agency’s press officer replies that the research has not affected the agency’s way of using the customer concept:

– We have no plans to change this, but it is an ongoing discussion at the agency how we work with those we serve, and how we talk about our work, says Helena Esscher.