Introduction

The purpose of public service organizations is to fulfil essential societal needs and provide services that contribute to the well-being, development, and progress of communities, and customers and citizens. These organizations are typically government/public services or semi-government entities established usually by statute to serve the public interest and promote the common good.

Public service organizations are responsible for delivering a wide range of essential services to citizens, such as healthcare, education, transportation, public safety, social welfare and environmental protection. They play a crucial role in a functioning society, ensuring that the needs of citizens are met, resources are efficiently managed and communities progress in a safe and supportive environment.

At the same time citizens and the society at large, expect public service organizations to be committed to the idea of consistently providing high quality services all the time, not only meeting but exceeding these expectations. More importantly citizens expect public services to provide protection as well as improvement of the way of life and at the same time addressing a multitude of challenges such as demographic shifts, shifts of economic power, accelerating urbanization, the climate crisis/resource scarcity and technological breakthroughs but also crisis due to geopolitical changes that have a more immediate impact.

It is no longer enough for public service organizations to deliver the basic services expected by customers/citizens resulting in customer/citizen satisfaction at its most. Public service excellence describes an approach that enables the creation of outstanding customer/citizen experiences by public service according to citizen/societal needs and surprising service provision, resulting in the creation of trust so that societal challenges are addressed through innovation. Consequently, public service excellence leads to addressing future societal challenges.

This document describes the principles, elements and sub-elements for creating outstanding customer/citizen experiences. The basic foundations of implementing service excellence are the two lower levels of the public service excellence pyramid (see Figure 1). These are described in standards such as ISO 9001:2015, ISO 10002:2018, ISO/IEC 20000-1:2018 and ISO 18091:2019. This document deals with the upper levels which are:

— public service according to citizen/societal needs (Level 3);
— surprising public service provision (Level 4).

Public service according to citizen/societal needs (Level 3) results in service that is perceived by customers/citizens as warm, genuine and value-creating. The customer/citizen experiences an emotional reaction by feeling valued as his/her needs are being addressed.

Surprising public service provision (Level 4) results in service that is tailor-made and leads to emotions of surprise and joy. It is delivered by exceeding customer/citizens expectations. This can be achieved by delivering unexpected outstanding customer/citizen experiences.

The public service excellence pyramid should be used to explain to managers and employees why a public service organization must focus on both: fulfilling the promises (Levels 1 and 2) and exceeding customer/citizen expectations by delivering excellent services (Levels 3 and 4).

Figure 1 — Public service excellence pyramid

This document defines the essential terms, describes relevant principles and establishes a model on public service excellence. It provides guidance for use by public service organizations wishing to achieve public service excellence.

The recipients of services from a public service organization are typically the members of the public or the community that the organization serves. These individuals or groups benefit from the services provided by the organization, which can cover a wide range of offerings depending on the specific mission and scope of the organization.

This means that in different circumstances the recipients of the public service can be the citizen, a customer or the consumer. For this reason, for the purposes of this document, the term “citizen/customer” refers to the recipient of the public service organization output unless otherwise specified.

The term “public service excellence” in the context of this document can take a number of different attributes such as outstanding public service, exceptional public service or high-quality public service.