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RD7 Service Center
Regional Revenue Office 7, The Revenue Department of Thailand
Thailand

The Problem

Internal Problem
Regional Revenue Office 7 has a lot of revenue officers with highly skilled and experienced staff who are capable of performing their duty. However, the organization and hierarchy structure creates age gaps between officers combined with the culture within the organization of the Regional Revenue Office 7 that forced revenue officers to work on their own. Moreover, the lack of integrated methods of administration that is vital to quality of service rendered to the citizens coupled with insufficient communication among staffs and peers has proved that a lot of officers are unable to pass on knowledge and experience to their peers (to each individual competence). The Director of Regional Revenue Office 7 foreseen this obstacles and was confident that the problems can be overcome by continuous personal development program and by empowerment. A competent tax officer must have extensive knowledge of tax laws various rules and regulation hence, Revenue Officers must develop their human resources through knowledge management (KM) by extracting and gather knowledge and experienced from more experienced tax officers and pass on such tacit knowledge to the younger/less experienced officers to ensure that services have been delivered with single high standard.
External problem
The image of services provided by the revenue offices related to taxpayer service have been tarnished by the bad impression felt or perceived by taxpayers. This is due to the fact that services take a long time to process and in Thai Culture people still question whether why they should pay taxes. In all most all cases taxpayers will have to pay more taxes after the assessment and they do not get anything in return, hence leave bad impression to taxpayers. Moreover, there are problems of lack of consistency in taxpayers service which is often caused by the decision made by officers are different even though the questions or problems are similar. This often triggers complaints in inconsistency in service standards provided by revenue officers.
Regional Revenue Office 7 (RRO7) therefore created RD7 Service Center to continuously develop and improve staffs competencies by ensuring that staff can apply their skills and knowledge in providing highly quality services in practice. The continued improvement in human resources also helped improve staff competence in passing on their knowledge and experience to other people. Having sufficient trained, acquire the skills, knowledge required and prepared all the arrangements necessary for good service provision. Director of RRO7 turned the situation around from inactive to proactive by responding and providing services that fits to the needs of each taxpayer. This in effect helps erase poor service perception delivered in the past and create a positive impression of the Revenue services to tax payers. To achieve service excellence tax office, RRO7 carried out customers /taxpayers surveys and used information collected to improve the existing service standards and service areas. The success of this project shows the right philosophy and vision undertaken to achieve a new era of civil service that focuses on citizen centric.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
RRO7 was set up as a road map to development from 2009-2012. The objective of this road map was to ensure that taxpayers will receive high single service standard at all revenue offices. Continuous training was carried out to upgrade revenue officer’s competence and personal quality such as become more capable, more charming (through polite Thai body gestures) by adopting some of the following practices and concepts; Public Management Quality Awards (PMQA), Customer Relation Management (CRM), Fundamental of good governance and Royal Decree on information act. The integration of working methods and procedures adopted has led to a shift in the way revenue officers work, Customer Relation Management (CRM) have been integrated to upgrade service delivery by the revenue officers at various revenue offices under supervision of RRO7 to improve service delivery. The RRO7 then proceeded with it roadmap of declaring 2012 the Year of Service Excellent under Service Excellence Tax Office of RRO7.
RD7 Service Center was set up to provide information, news, tax advice, consultation and other services. RD7 Service Center also acts as communication channel for taxpayers to give feedbacks to revenue officers. RRO7 has adopted RD House concept that includes 3S, 3P and 1 K as follows:

3S
Service Mind- A new concept of proving services that involves unique delivery of services and providing services whole heartedly, in other words, citizen centric.
Service Standard- High single service standard is provided in all processes including physical standard and service provider (staff) standard and problem solving standard.
Service Culture is the embedment of new RD Service culture through SMILE code ( S : Service Mind M : Marvelous I : Impression L : Lively E : Excellence) to create and instill a unique Thai service culture among RRO7’s staffs that reflects Revenue Department service culture.
3P
People- Develop and improve human capital and competencies so that staffs are highly capable, knowledgeable in their field of work, eager to share their knowledge, committed to provide excellence services, polite and charming that is unique to the Revenue Department service culture.
Place- Improve and set standard of physical appearance of service areas by bearing in mind that it should be comfortable and functional to both taxpayers and officers. In addition, service areas should also have relaxed ambience so taxpayers are not bothered while waiting to be served.
Process- Improve service processes so that services are delivered promptly through the use of IT to facilitate daily operation and search of information.

Knowledge Management- Systematic application of KM that makes searching for information on tax law, tax collection become simple, interesting and up to date. At the same time provide knowledge related to the Revenue Code for publication via various means such as audio and video presentation that can be easily understood. On this occasion RRO7 used all channels of communications to pass on and share the knowledge via Internet, Intranet DVD, local libraries, radio, television, and through tax advisor that gives advice/consultation both on one to one and in group basis.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
Initiator, Implementer Supporter and Stakeholders
Initiator and Implementer:
Ms. Pawana Thammasila, Director of RRO7, who identified internal and external problems, assessed, evaluated the situation and initiated the road map to the solution by setting up RD7 Service Center to tackled problems encountered and succeeded in solving the problems experienced by RRO7.

Supporter:
Revenue Department and some 1200 Revenue officers under the administration of RRO7 namely, Pitsanuloak, Sukhothai, Tak, Utaradit, Kampangpetch, Petchaboon, Pichit and Nakorn Sawan
Stakeholders Taxpayers:
Approximately 441,000 persons including general public and other government agencies in the southern region of northern part of Thailand which are under the administration of RRO7 and include 8 Revenue Office mentioned above and 77 Area Revenue Branch Offices.
RRO7 has successfully created a new culture of taxpayer services that has led to both more efficient and effective on the day to day operation. The RD7 Service Center has resulted in the new era of services that imprints in taxpayers mind that services are prompt information provided is up to the minute.
Service Excellence tax office Initiative has yielded the highest benefit as well as worthwhile means investment. RD7 Service Center has changed the concept of taxpayer services; the services provided meet the higher expectation of the citizens. In addition, the initiative has helped RRO7 to meet its tax collection target and build sustainable tax base (2012 Budget RRO7 were assigned to collected 7,100 million baht of tax revenue, it collected 7,600 million baht or a 7% exceeded its target).

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
Main objectives
The main objectives of establishing RD7 Service Center were to:
1. Improve human resources and competencies of RRO7 staffs to ensure that staffs are able to adapt and use their tacit knowledge, their competence and experience to provide exceptional service standard to the citizens.
2. To create a new perception of high single service standard at all touch points contact points where customer experience management was applied to ensure that taxpayers can see and feel the level of dedication revenue officers of RRO7 has put in their services. The establishment of RD7 Service Center all so helps attract taxpayers to pay their taxes voluntarily, thus, create a sustainable tax base and meet our target.
Strategies used
RD7 Service Center used the following strategies to improve its service delivery processes to upgrade its service standard to exceed taxpayer’s expectation.
1. Staffs of RRO7 were empowered by Director of RRO7 who encouraged participation through small group activities as follows;
- Organized the contests for logo, slogan, poems, articles and song to gain officer’s participation.
- Prepare service places by installing ‘queue’ system and decorating service area.
- Organized the contest ‘quality team’ run by Area Revenue Office that serve the excellent service project properly. All projects are developed from time-to-time in order to reach the goal of successfully being ‘professional consultant’ in the future.
2. Continuously and systematically integrate knowledge management (KM) to create good foundation for sustainable service excellence culture by carrying out surveys to gather feedbacks from customers and stakeholders by searching for explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge and exchange this information through Cops by:
- Establish community of practice to exchange views and knowledge at workshops organized by RRO7.
- Use new technology to support and facilitate communication with taxpayers which includes communicate and release news via internet such as e-taxpayer handbook, e-tax officer manual use Web technology to communicate exchange knowledge and train human resources.
3. Apply CRM concept: Customer Relation Management at all stages of work process by:
- Continuously carry out surveys to get feedbacks from taxpayer by various means such as taxpayer’s satisfaction box.
- Quality control in how services are delivered by interviewing taxpayers and use information collected to assess and evaluates to set service delivery standard continuously upgrade service standard offices to build better relation to customers and the citizens lay out plan to organize an ongoing meet the public activities project at all Area Revenue as well as
- Organize RD go campus project “to teach tax at universities” to instill good ethics to create awareness of paying taxes voluntarily and correctly to the young generation and increase tax knowledge among undergraduates prior to their graduation or enter to the job market.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
Operation Process
In order to achieve service excellence RRO7 set direction to improve service quality to the citizens in 3 dimensions.
1. Make sure that tax officers are ready to serve taxpayers with service mind good manner polite body gesture and softy spoken and focus on customer centric to become professional service provider to achieve high service quality RRO7 organize workshops, seminars, activities for staff and officers to interact to help improve both tax knowledge and service quality through practice so that officers can adapt their skills and knowledge when delivering services to taxpayers.
2. Refurbish service areas under the administration of RRO7 by providing amenities, clean, tidy service areas and tax knowledge center and at the same time ensure that services are delivered at the same standard.
3. Turn around work process through extensive use of ICT to improve service standard to become an integrated learning organization by applying knowledge management concept to provide service to tax payer and RD staff according to their job descriptions. Simple learning media such as audio and video have been used to ensure that the project is accepted by the stakeholders.
To improve service quality provided to the citizens mentioned above RRO7 launched Service Excellence Tax Office toward to professional consultants by setting a clear direction and roadmap of activities from 2009-2012 as follows;
RRO7 declared 2009 as Year of Awareness by focus on Public Management Quality Awards (PMQA), encouraged officer’s participation and carried out surveys to gather feedback from taxpayers.
RRO7 declared 2010 as Year of Action: prepare and implement new level of service standard according to the roadmap which comprises of preparation of getting “mind ready”, “team ready” and “personal ready” to ensure that staffs are ready to apply their knowledge, experience and personal quality to serve taxpayers effectively.
RRO7 declared 2011 as Year of Customer Satisfaction by instilling a long lasting Service excellence culture to the officers by combining routine work to other service activities to develop human capital and maintain high service standard. In addition, change work culture through empowerment by ensuring that officers feel free to express their creative thoughts, through stimulus so officers are happy with the activities and have the opportunity to share are exchange their knowledge in various activities such as RD club, Tax knowledge via media, and “ smile and knowledge” activity.
RRO7 declared 2012 as Year of Service Excellent’ where RRO7 utilized its success in continuing upgrade its service standard to deliver services at RD7 Service Centers. The RD7 Service Center provides information, news, advisory services, other services and acts as a communication channel as well as received feedback from taxpayers. RD7 Service Center was set up to maintain high service standard following learning organization concept until it becomes the service culture of RD7 Service Center. To become a truly integrated learning organization, the RRO7 carried out various initiatives and activities such as change the work process that involves more participation from stakeholders.

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
Obstacles
RD7 Service Center has proven to be a very successful project to provide services that meet or exceed taxpayer’s expectations. Service procedures and service area have been refurbished and up graded. However the project is not well known to attract sufficient number of citizens to come in and make the most use of RD7 Service Center.
Overcoming the problem
1. RD7 Service Center undertook the following methods to publicize this project.
1.1 Jointly publicize RD7 Service Center with other public relation activities such as: Tax tutor, RD go campus, improve relation with stakeholders and mobile Area Revenue service projects
1.2 Through local radio station, internal announcement , Tax clinic on local Television and local newspaper
1.3 Web site, YouTube, Face book
2. Provide mobile RD7 Service Center to target customers in every provinces such as, tax advisory services, internet filing services and tax filing service.
3. Provide tax related news by e-mail and other documents to target groups from RD7 Service Center to accounting offices, business owners and other government agencies.

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
Resources used
With limited resources the goal to establish RD7 Service Center to provide excellent services to the citizens was conducted with careful planning to maximize the utilization of resources. In this process RRO7 spent 4 million baht from 2012 budget to improve service areas, train and improve skills of 1,200 tax officers to serve 441,000 taxpayers and proceeded with:
1. Establishment of RD7 Service Center by refurbishing existing service areas in all 8 Area Revenue offices, 77 Area Revenue Branch Offices which add up to 86 offices to provide uniform service standard that has the following criteria
1.1 Clean and beautiful service area that is equip with comfortable seats and drinking water
1.2 Staffs give tax advises and consultation to taxpayers in person, by email and by phone
1.3 Provide tax news, communicate with taxpayers as well as receive feedback via high speed internet
1.4 Use interesting and easy to understand tax lesson by multimedia such as video on LCD screen
1.5 Provide books, printed matters, leaflets that contains tax knowledge information of Thai economy, politics, society and government agencies news
1.6 Place suggestion box at service areas to receive feedback and suggestions to evaluate what needs to be improved to provide better services.
2. Improve staffs competency according to their job description by organizing some 44 workshops, seminars and activities to help improve their potential in all aspects so staffs become highly capable, efficient, charming and ready to serve citizen like professional service provider to maximize benefits and exceed their expectation.
3. Publish manual for electronic services standard.
4. Organize knowledge sharing and relationship building between RRO7’s staffs and customers for instance Smile and Knowledge, Show & Share & Connect, RD go Campus, poetry, contest, service area competition unique taxpayers service experience by each of 8 Area Revenue offices as follows,
Pitsanuloak Area Revenue Office, RD Smile Care
Sukhothai Area Revenue Office, RD Smile Mobile
Tak Area Revenue Office, RD Smile Tax Consult
Utaradit Area Revenue Office, RD Smile Tax Family
Kampangpetch Area Revenue Office, RD Smile Delivery
Petchaboon Area Revenue Office, RD Smile Professional
Pichit Area Revenue Office, RD Smile Engagement
Nakorn Sawan Area Revenue Office, RD Smile Tax Planner

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
Continuity and sustainability of the project
1. Carried out ongoing surveys to assess and evaluate problems and the needs of taxpayers to continue improve services to meet the requirement of RRO 7 and the citizens.
2. Encourage establishment of systematic knowledge sharing processes between officers and the citizens. At the same time implement KM in simple and easy to understand format such as visual, audio and other forms by using all communication channel including local television, local radio station, internet and DVD.
3. Encourage officers to strictly follow service standard and instill good service culture through various activities such as contests within and outside the department.
Promoted of RD7 Service Center project
1. Publicize RD7 Service Center project internally on Revenue Department’s website to ensure that all units within the RD is informed about this project and able to adapt the concept and apply it in their respective offices.
2. Publicize RD7 Service Center project to outsiders via internet (www.rd.go.th) and local radio station, television stations and printed matter.
3. Continuously organize activities to promote RD7 Service Center internally and externally namely “Smile and Knowledge” to build better relationship between the citizens and RD staffs, RD go campus campaign to give tax lectures to undergraduate students prior to entering the labor market. These public relation activities receive good feedback.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
Key elements of success
1. Operation of RD7 Service Center focuses on improvement in work process and working environment, staffs are empowered and encouraged to be involved in the launch of RD7 Service Center. Hence staffs under RRO7 are happy and enjoy their work as they get the opportunity to share their thoughts and express them. In addition, management level also pays great importance to systematic human resource training to develop expertise and various skills (communication, negotiation etc.) of their subordinates.
2. Leading by empowerment initiative and transparent administration of RRO7 coupled with effective communication among staffs of RRO7 boosted self-esteem and staffs become more attached to their work that contributed to the success of RD7 Service Center project.
3. Administration of RD7 Service Center is a far sighted vision of Director of RRO7 who is determined to improve the overall competency of staff and quality of service delivered through change management moreover. The Director of RRO7 fully supports manpower, budget, time, equipments and devoted herself in the transfer of knowledge, through guidance, clear communicate on matters related to planning of this project, giving advice, follow up progress and solve problems or limitations faced by revenue offices under her administration, hence, led to the success of the project.
4. Management by empowerment through small group activities including service quality contest, electronics service contest, service area contest and reward staffs who volunteered to be in the front line serving taxpayers and able to blend tax knowledge activities into their routine jobs. This brings about a new era of service provision that stimulate revenue officers to be creative and extrovert which eventually changed the service culture of RRO7.
5. Continuously assess, evaluate internal and external administration and get feedback from stakeholders at the same time use appropriate IT systems to support daily operations to set target and strategy for the success of future projects.
Expected outcome
RD7 Service Center launched its motto “We are dedicated to serve” that is unique to all RD7 Service Center. The operation of RD7 Service Center received good response from both RRO7 officers and taxpayers. Survey results were collected after the project and the feedback were excellent.
Officers within RRO7 are expected to be more competence in their field of work to the point that staffs effectively apply KM, exchange their experience, can properly communicate, able to adapt and put their skills and knowledge to good use when providing services to taxpayers at professional standard. Staffs feel like they are part of the organization and are happy and confident to give advice, assistance to taxpayers, thus, allowing them to provide services with pride. In addition, training has helped staffs to improve their manor, personality and confidence they are eager to serve, consequently service delivery of RRO7 earned taxpayers trusts. High service quality delivered to taxpayers helped RRO7 to create voluntary compliance and therefore sustainable tax base that is reflected in the revenue collected that exceeds forecast.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Regional Revenue Office 7, The Revenue Department of Thailand
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Pawana Thammasila
Title:   Director of Regional Revenue Office 7  
Telephone/ Fax:   +(66) 0 5523 2545
Institution's / Project's Website:   -
E-mail:   secretary.region7@rd.go.th  
Address:   1/1 Singhawat Road
Postal Code:   65000
City:   Muang District
State/Province:   Phitsanuloke
Country:   Thailand

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