Government service delivery and customer journeys in the Caribbean Netherlands

One of the pillars of the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations in the Netherlands, is making public services more sustainable. The Caribbean Netherlands is included in this mission. But the context in the Caribbean is vastly different from the one in the Dutch mainland. Sharing knowledge plays a central role. To involve the people in the Caribbean Netherlands, policy officer Allison Pruschen, together with former project leader Ton Deurloo, organized a customer journey training on Bonaire, Saba and St. Eustatius. Allison talks about the customer journey training (Dutch webpage) and service delivery in the Caribbean Netherlands.

Although the Caribbean Netherlands is part of the Netherlands, it is a completely different world. Allison: “What you have to take into account is that these are very small municipalities with few employees.” Bonaire has about 26,500 inhabitants. Saba about 2,100 and Statia (as Sint Eustatius is called by the local population) 3,200. “If you work for the government there, your range of tasks is much broader than in a municipality in Europe’s Netherlands. The municipality, for example, deals with the island’s infrastructure, such as the airport, harbours, and their maintenance. In addition, there are projects implemented by the government. If you work in ICT, you are not only responsible for the laptops and the servers. You also must maintain the digitalization project.”

Moreover, it is more difficult to attract extra staff in the Caribbean Netherlands. “If you live on one of the islands, you can’t work on another island. They are too far apart for that. This is also different from the Netherlands.”

Own problems, own approaches, own laws

Employees in the Caribbean Netherlands realize that it is important to maintain a connection with the Europe’s Netherlands. “But they strongly feel that they are a different part of the Netherlands, with a different language and a different context,” says Allison. “They are a different community and have a different history.”

And they have their own problems, own approaches, and own laws. Not all laws in Europe’s Netherlands apply there. In the Caribbean Netherlands, they work with Dutch laws using the comply or explain principle: either you comply, or you explain why you will not follow the law. There can be various reasons for this. They may not have the capacity to enforce law, and some legislation simply does not make sense in the Caribbean Netherlands.

The Caribbean Netherlands is not always included when policy is made in The Hague, the Netherlands, Allison experiences. “If there is a problem in Europe’s Netherlands and a few years later the same problem arises in the Caribbean Netherlands, the Dutch solution is often applied without looking at whether it fits the local context.”

Universal standard, with local context

What does not differ is that the various departments work in isolation, sometimes even within one organization. In addition, government-wide processes are often not linked. Customer journeys are a good method to make that happen.

With that cultural and local context, things sometimes went wrong in the past. In The Hague, the Dutch political capital, there is a lot of substantive knowledge. The Hague generally thinks it knows better and that it can overlook the local context. But people in the Caribbean Netherlands know much better how things work there. Another problem with the knowledge from The Hague is that it was often flown in. But then it left again with the experts. “When we come to share knowledge, we also want to secure it on the island.”

Learning to do it themselves

Learning to do it themselves was therefore an important part of the customer journey training. The trainees worked with a practical case study. They looked at how they could apply this in their own work. Ton and Allison are very satisfied with the customer journey trainings they gave on the three islands. The trainees were excited as well.

Now they have to do it themselves. That doesn’t just happen. In fact, such a customer journey is something extra on top of the daily work. This is the first thing to be dropped when things get too busy. If the knowledge gained is not kept alive, it disappears again. Maybe it would work if management saw its value. In commercial organizations, this is not such a problem. Then there’s a clear target for customer satisfaction. To improve it, they use customer journeys. In government, you cannot set a target for a customer journey.

Allison: “I think repetition works well. We have been saying for two years that something needs to be done about service delivery. Every organization recognizes something needs to be done. Continuously offering customer journey projects, follow-up sessions or walk-in hours can help. In addition, we must also explore to what extent the community aligns with the needs of the Caribbean Netherlands. Are there other needs? What do people need to continue developing the customer journey? How can we proactively learn from each other? These are some of the questions we will be exploring. If you create togetherness, you can also keep it alive.”

Service delivery is getting better and better

Allison notes that service delivery is steadily improving. The first steps are being taken to establish a customer contact center. There have also been discussions that have yielded concrete results. For example, a hybrid team has been set up, part of which works in The Hague and part on Bonaire. Five government-wide customer journeys have been mapped out. And customer-oriented training sessions are currently being developed. There are also talks about merging certain service desks in specific buildings, a necessary step. Service delivery in Bonaire, Saba and Statia is extremely fragmented, with locations spread all over the island. The national services are working on combining those desks, preferably within one building.

“The first signs of this can also be heard in Saba. It’s starting to buzz there too, that things can be done differently. During the customer journey training, we mapped a broad customer journey, covering all different phases. We identified many elements in the journeys that need improvement.”

Allison and Ton have now been planting seeds for almost two years. Employees are increasingly learning to put themselves in the citizens’ shoes. They are learning not only to look at the process, but also at what they can do to improve citizens’ experience, so that service delivery runs more smoothly.

Much can be learned from the Caribbean Netherlands

In many areas, service delivery is already going well. Sometimes Europe’s Netherlands can learn from that. “We discussed support for digitalization. We advised that they should talk about it in an empathetic and accessible way. When empathy is emphasized on the islands, messages come across much more naturally. Some areas still need improvement, but conveying something in an empathetic way works much better in the Caribbean Netherlands. We can really learn from that.” It’s a testament to how we can learn from each other, especially when we have close access to vastly different peers.