Improving customer satisfaction for non-voluntary (statutory) customers – such as prisoners, involuntary patients, wards of the state, regulated businesses and tax payers – is more complex than assisting voluntary customers to provide input.

First, statutory services always have two broad groups of customers:

• The non-voluntary client or customer (the person who is arrested, detained, regulated or placed under government care and control).
• Members of the public who are the actual beneficiaries of the service. 

Good customer service practice always seeks input from the second group of customers, the members of the public, in the design, delivery and evaluation of statutory services. 

Second, modern public sectors around the world encourage service improvement input from their non-voluntary clients. Traditionally, non-voluntary customers had input into how services are provided to them via complaints taken to court, and more recently, through customer complaints to authorities such as the Ombudsman. This legalistic feedback from non-voluntary customers has established service standards over the years that are now recognised as common-place: service standards including due process, fairness, transparency, equity and efficiency. Modern public services however recognise that, by using their discretion, customer input into service improvements can deliver more successful services, prevent recidivism and do so in ways that are quicker, cheaper and more effective than responding to judicial injunctions. 

Finally, some statutory services are required by law to be provided in specific, standardised ways. Even the most standardised services, however, leave service providers with a degree of discretion which can be used to customise services within limits. At a minimum, standardised services can be customised by:

• Keeping individual customers informed about what is happening to them and why.
• Treating individual customers with respect.
• Treating individual customers fairly, with due process and consistent with legal requirements.
• Providing the service in a timely fashion.
• Providing the service in an efficient manner.
• Providing individual customers with appropriate support (such as a friend, guardian, translator, lawyer etc).