Government of Canada Internet Guide

Client Analysis

This section, in line with the GOL client-driven service principle, focuses on identifying your clients and their service level needs for your Web initiative.

This section has four parts:

Identifying Your Clients
How to define the clients for your Web initiative

Determining Client Needs
How to figure out what clients want from your Web initiative

Assessing Service Levels
How to measure and maintain an adequate level of service for your Web initiative

Client Analysis Resources
Resources that will help you understand your clients and their needs

Identifying Your Clients

This section outlines methods for defining your clients, so you can give them reliable, efficient on-line services.

General client analysis approaches include the following:

• on-site questionnaires;
• focus groups;
• community telephone surveys; and
• Internet and public opinion research.

Review client profiling of your institution, along with the purpose of the Web initiative, so that you can do the following:

• identify major client groups for each program area, and identify related stakeholder groups and associations;
• develop a corporate profile of clients by pulling together existing client data from individual program areas;
• gather existing client data from client surveys, focus group studies and other research from your institution;
• create a corporate-wide profile of client information needs;
• consider doing specialized research such as focus testing, on-line surveys and an omnibus survey to obtain more client information; and
• bring together data from a variety of sources to develop a good profile of your clients and their potential Internet needs.

Compare client profiles with existing information on the current Internet community, by doing the following:

• reviewing existing studies on Web use by Statistics Canada, Neilson / Nordicity, Angus Reid, Maclean's, Ekos and other organizations;
• using the Internet to gather data relevant to your client base;
• developing profiles of current and emerging Web user communities; and
• identifying which of your client groups are on-line or getting on-line.

Develop a client profile, by doing the following:

• documenting your Web initiative client profile; and
• tracking the evolution of the Internet user community as it continues to grow and diversify, and as you become more aware of your clients.

Determining Client Needs

In accordance with client-driven service, you should regularly consult your clients to ensure that your services match their needs. Consider the following questions.

• Are your clients likely to use electronic services and information?
• Why do they visit your Web site, and what do they expect to find there?
• Do they visit your site to find out more about your programs and services?
• What keywords will they use to find your site or your products? Keep these in mind as you plan the content.
• What topics will keep your clients interested?
• How can you take their feedback into account?

Research your clients to do the following:

• identify their and your on-line priorities;
• better segment your on-line clients;
• identify the best information categories for your on-line menu system;
• design on-line tools to help your clients navigate your site;
• promote your on-line site and services; and
• monitor and evaluate the quality of your on-line services.

Assessing Service Levels

This section provides steps to follow when assessing the level of service your clients expect.

As a service provider, you must determine how much clients need the services and information you provide. You must also balance the accuracy, the responsiveness and the availability of the information against the costs of providing the right level of service.

To determine and maintain the appropriate level of service, take the following steps.

1. Measure how a lack of information affects clients. Formal definitions of client dependency will help you determine levels of service needed. Discuss and formally state client needs.
   Evaluate the consequences of poor service. If your information is inaccurate, or your service is unavailable or slow, will that:
   
   • threaten anyone's safety or health?
   • hurt your clients' ability to do business?
   • have a serious personal impact on your clients?
   • affect your clients' productivity?
   • cause your clients to lose face or credibility?
   • create a politically embarrassing situation?
   • give rise to complaints from special interest groups?
   
   You may conclude that there is no need to proceed with the following steps because your service or information is not critical to your clients.
   Even if you go no further in defining service levels, advise your staff, management and clients why. Their feedback - or lack of it - will either justify your decision or allow you to reconsider your plan so that you can meet their needs.
2. If you proceed, the next step is to determine the probable size of your client group. Other organizations providing similar services and information can be a good source of estimates. State the size of the expected client group and number of concurrent clients, and add this information to the service level definition.
3. After determining required levels of accuracy, responsiveness and availability, and the expected number of clients, you can attempt to estimate the resources needed to support your information service. Remember that resources include costs of maintenance contracts, staff time and floor space, as well as expenses for computers and communications equipment (as mentioned in the "Financial Resources" section). Once again, document why you reached the decisions you did and the costs involved.
4. Determine and document the measurement and tracking systems that will allow you to verify that service levels are being met, and make arrangements to implement these.
5. Plan and document how you will sustain levels of service as your initiative offers more features and the number of clients grows.
6. Knowing the impact of your services and information on your clients, the service levels you need to deliver that information effectively and the costs of meeting that service level, you can now do one of the following:
   • decide that the costs are worth the benefits and proceed;
   • re-examine and revalidate the decisions made in steps 1 and 2, possibly redefine service levels accordingly, and then recalculate the costs in steps 3, 4 and 5;
   • look for alternative methods of meeting the defined service level; or
   • drop the project as not offering sufficient benefit for the cost.
7. If you decide to proceed, formally state your reasons and decisions in a service level definition. This will inform all parties—your staff, your clients and any third parties, such as vendors or contractors—not only what must be achieved, but why. Any contractor who will be supplying services to you should sign a service level agreement specifying your requirements, the size of the client community, penalties for not complying and a termination date, which will allow you to renegotiate as your needs change.
8. Set your clients' expectations—in advance, if possible—by informing clients of the level of service you intend to provide. You can do this in literature describing your new service. Within the Web site, offer the client a way to determine what level of service you intend to provide.
9. Monitor feedback on the operation of your Web site. This feedback can come from performance management software, simple operating system or application statistics, and clients' comments or complaints. Make sure your clients can submit feedback.