Meeting documents

To receive an update on progress of Customer Service focussed projects and to gain an insight into preparations for the Unitary Customer and Digital Workstream.

Contributors:

Mr John Chilver, Cabinet Member for Resources

Mr Lloyd Jeffries, Director of Customer

Miss Kelly Page, Customer Experience Head of Service

Papers:

Customer Update

The Chairman welcomed Mr John Chilver, Cabinet Member for Resources, Miss Kelly Page, Customer Experience Head of Service and Miss Tracy Eaton, Customer Experience Manager to the meeting. The Cabinet Member highlighted a number of key achievements including: better and faster resolution of customer contacts in the Customer Service Centre (CSC), introduction of webchat and aesthetic improvements to the website and increased usage of the Customer Relationship Management system, Firmstep.

Kelly Page took Members through the report. During the presentation and in answer to Member’s subsequent questions the following main points were noted:

• The Customer Experience team had been seeking feedback from customers through webchat and customer effort scores on the website, by attending the County Show and various Local Area Forum meetings and by liaising with the Bucks Older Action Group, to understand how older people like to use the website.
• More web pages had been improved for accessibility with an overall score of 92% recently achieved.  Fix my Street had also been redesigned to be more user friendly.
• Online Customer Service training course had been launched and completed by 550 members of staff.  Members suggested that it could be a mandatory requirement for new starters at the Council.
• A Member expressed frustration with the Council’s website, particularly the inaccuracy of the search facility.  Miss Page advised that the website was being improved constantly but the Council did not have the same budget as big retailers such as Amazon.  Many changes to the website were in direct response to user feedback and by tidying old content off the site, the search accuracy should improve.
• It was noted that the CSC now had a dedicated phone line for town and parish councils but it had not been particularly well used.  Members suggested that this should be more widely promoted.
• In response to a question about the officer working group on Customer, Kelly Page explained that she and the Service Director, Customer were meeting weekly with counterparts in all four district councils to discuss what good looks like for customers and focussing on how to deliver robust customer service from the vesting day of the new authority in April 2020.
• The Chairman asked about the alignment of IT systems and how planning for IT was progressing, as this would ultimately underpin effective service delivery and communications with residents.  The Cabinet Member confirmed that there was a separate IT workstream.
• A Member commented that it was vital for the preparation for the May 2020 elections to the new authority, that residents would be able to request a postal vote online, so this needed to be considered by the IT and Customer workstreams.
• It was noted that it was important to ensure that all Community Hubs would be able to offer consistent, high quality information to customers, wherever they were in the County.
• Members also stressed that the needs of customers who would not contact the Council via online channels must also be considered.

The Chairman thanked Miss Page and Miss Eaton for their update.