Meeting documents

Mr Lloyd Jeffries, Director of Customer, and Mrs Kelly Baines, Head of Customer Experience, will present an overview of the Customer Service Standards Review.

Contributors:

Mr John Chilver, Cabinet Member for Resources

Mr Lloyd Jeffries, Director of Customer

Mrs Kelly Baines, Head of Customer Experience

Papers:

Report attached.

The Chairman welcomed Mr John Chilver, Cabinet Member for Resources, Mr Lloyd Jeffries, the Director of Customer, and Mrs Kelly Baines, the Head of Customer Experience, to the meeting. Members received a report on the review of the Customer Service Standards and asked questions on the report. During the session and in answer to subsequent Members’ questions, the following main points were noted:

·         The new Head of Digital, Mr Ben Unsworth, started this week. He would be conducting a digital maturity assessment for the Council, which would help the Council to understand where existing strengths lay from a digital perspective and would highlight which capabilities would need to be developed further.  

·         The Digital and Customer Service teams were now located together. This enabled the business unit to review the end-to-end customer journey.

·         The reviewed Customer Service Standards aimed to create a customer service that would be more digitally focused, drive forward the channel shift towards digital communication, align with customer expectations which were continually increasing, and deliver clear staff accountabilities.

·         Part of the ‘Brilliant at the Basics’ programme was to get customer feedback and use it to improve customer services. Previously the Council was rated a 2* by the Society for IT Practitioners in the Public Sector or Socitm, and had now moved up to a 3*. The Directorate aimed to reach a 4* rating by the end of the calendar year. Three fixed-term web content editors were now employed, which enabled the Directorate to drive improvements.

·         Webchat had a soft launch on the Contact Us form and the HR service desk. It had received positive feedback.

·         The Directorate was looking to integrate social media into the Customer Service Centre as a communication option.

·         Office hours had changed as a response to customer feedback, from 0830-1730 Monday to Thursday, and 0830-1700 on Friday.  

·         The Customer Service Standards first launched in 2016. The review aimed to ensure that the standards had evolved in line with how customers accessed services at present. Mr Jeffries would provide an update on the Brilliant at the Basics programme and the Customer Service Standards Review to the next meeting in September.

·         Directorate recommendations included developing a Customer Experience Strategy; working with the Communications team during Customer Service Week to promote the new standards and ensure customers were engaged; to create an e-learning module on customer service; to build a network of customer service champions to encourage collaborative working in the best interests of the customer; and building customer focus groups so that residents had a voice. The recommendations had not been through governance channels yet.

·         Multiple channels of communication would equate greater cost. The Chairman asked whether there would be more or less communication channels in the future or the same number. Mr Jeffries responded that according to the vision of the Customer Experience Strategy, telephony would certainly drop, leaving a smaller customer service centre dealing with complex queries and hopefully doing more for frontline services by delivering deeper integrations. The aim was to expand communication channels to include social media as a customer point and potentially artificial intelligence, but first there was a need to identify key issues, go through discovery stages in terms what was trying to be improved, and then put the right channel in place to provide that service.

·         An average call costs £7 per transaction. The same transaction through the BCC website costs 8 pence.

·         If there were more communication channels in the future, how would savings be made? The Directorate had delivered just over £630k of efficiency savings, mainly through channel shift. If the Directorate was able to deliver further improvements by investing in technology, channel shift and customer experience, then calculated risks should be taken rather than banking the initial saving, which would be a short-sighted benefit in terms of what the long-term aim would be delivering the Customer Experience Strategy.

·         Alongside cashable savings, time and resource savings were important considerations, so that officers could be released to do better at their day jobs.

·         If customers had questions that were not answered elsewhere, the Director of Customer assured the Committee that they would still be able to speak to an adviser directly.

·         Call drop-out rates were monitored on a monthly basis to push performance.

·         A Member recommended that the Directorate provide a service for customers so that if they have an emergency, they could be put straight through to an adviser. Mr Jeffries and Ms Baines agreed to take this recommendation away.

·         Face-to-face customer contact would be maintained through: increased reception hours, and plans for local government reform for the 19 community hubs where there would be the opportunity for face-to-face communication. Mr Chilver highlighted that Members were often the frontline in receiving customer/resident experience feedback, and played an important role. Mr Chilver urged Members to pass any feedback to the Customer Directorate.

·         A Member questioned how far the team had gone in ascertaining what local communities wanted from the service, eg, the blind, hard of hearing, and those with learning difficulties. Mr Jeffries affirmed that the Directorate was not shying away from working in collaboration with residents as, if engaging with them made the facilities easier to use, and if everyone could get online and stay online, it would make the jobs of officers a lot easier and capacity could be freed up. The Directorate would be reviewing all webpages to look at disability access, and speaking to adult social care colleagues and residents regarding usability. They would make sure that they involved residents in the design process going forward.  

·         A project was being undertaken to analyse 17,000 customer feedback forms, to gain business intelligence on the variety of customers using the service and their different customer needs. It was agreed that the findings of the project would be shared with the Committee.

ACTION: Head of Customer Experience

·         Conversations with Customer Service Advisers were recorded and measurable, but conversations between customers and officers were not recorded and therefore difficult to measure. The review aimed to create customer service standards that were measurable, and that applied to all Council employees so that they were all accountable.  

·         Advisers could potentially answer multiple webchats at one time, but could only be on the telephone to one person at one time. This was why priority was given to those contacting the Council online or through webchat for general enquiries.

·         Embedding the standards effectively would be about obtaining the buy-in and ownership of Council employees. The biggest challenge would be to measure the standards and find out user experiences. The Directorate would need to be proactive, look at who has made contact, and contact them to obtain feedback to inform service improvements. Further areas to explore would be to evaluate how outsourced service providers were performing in their customer service.

·         The Directorate was working very closely with the Complaints team, having monthly management meetings where they looked at complaints data, insight and performance, and analysed this so that feedback could be provided to service areas to further drive improvements. 

·         Fix My Street was being run by a third party provider.

·         A Member commented that the Council was getting really good at communication, but not quite so good at frontline delivery and quality and monitoring of delivery. An improved and better interface was needed.

·         Improvement suggestions from Members included developing more webchat for Fix My Street with an FAQ and link to Communities on the same webpage; and developing Twitter usage for communicating updates.

·         Mr Chilver detailed how the Council was assisting the less digitally enabled through libraries, particularly with Learn My Way training.

·         If the Council was driving towards more digital communications, there would need to be equality in internet access across the County, and robustness, resilience and reliance in the Council’s own systems. Both these were highlighted as key elements of the Technology Strategy.

·         A Member recommended that the web pages were constantly refreshed, up-to-date and exciting. The Directorate responded that they were creating prototypes for a new webpage template, and aimed to trial the prototypes during National Customer Service Week in October to get public feedback.

·         Broken web links had reduced from 800 to 130. The Directorate aimed to have all links fixed by September 2018 or earlier, and would report progress back to the Committee.

 ACTION: Head of Customer Experience