Agenda item

(Chief Executive) to consider the attached report.

The Head of Customer Services, Ms Olivia Shaw introduced the first the annual report on the Customer Service Programme. She noted that items on the Customer Services programme had been on the work programme for the Governance and Resources Select Committees, but had now been combined into this single report, which covered activity from November 2016 to January 2018.

The Customer Service Programme was redesigned to focus on 4 key projects:

• Civic Offices Reception,
• Corporate Contact Centre (CCC),
• Systems and Digital Development,
• Customer Satisfaction;

The delivery of these projects was overseen by the Customer Programme Board (CPB) which reported to the Transformation Programme Board. The Head of Customer Service had also taken over the chairmanship of the Website Development Board to deliver improvements to the main EFDC website.

She informed the Committee that the Civic Offices Reception project had delivered a high level design and costing for refurbishment which had been agreed in principle by Cabinet in March 2017. The project was aligned to the overall Accommodation Review and consequently followed the timelines set out in that scheme of work; the CPB was now waiting for further details on how listing the building may impact on these designs before progressing further.

The EFDC Complaints policy had been reviewed and subsequently a new policy agreed with the removal of Step 3. The majority of the Step 3 investigations went on to become Ombudsman cases, which suggested that this stage in the process did not deliver significant value to customers in resolving their complaints. The removal of Step 3 had not resulted in an increase Ombudsman cases during 2017/18.

As for the Corporate Contact Centre (CCC), phase 1 (which started February 2017) brought together the Neighbourhoods Contact Centre and the Switchboard. This had involved a significant amount of change to working practices, cross training, knowledge sharing and cultural change required across the two former teams to deliver a unified service.

Since 1^st November these teams have been formally merged and they had an increased number of agents available to resolve enquiries without the need to transfer into the back office. These changes had reduced the abandoned call percentage by 3% since implementation. The CCC currently took an average of 9000 calls a month in addition to managing email enquiries and all corporate complaints.

Phase 2 began in January 2018 when main reception desk staff were transferred into Customer Services line management, bringing face to face and telephony services together for the first time. Work was also beginning on the next area of business, Development Management.

The Systems and Digital Development work would follow a principle of ‘digital by design’ rather than forcing channel shift. The aim was to signpost towards intuitive and integrated self service options that customers will prefer to use whilst maintaining traditional access channels. All 26 existing online forms had been refreshed during 2017.

An essential part of the programme was the delivery of a Customer Relationship Management system (CRM). This would act as a layer above internal systems to enable officers to access information, process requests and respond to customer enquiries without being trained in all systems.  It also integrates to reduce the double handling of data, creates a single customer record and provides a knowledge base.  This was a complex piece of work delivered through the Technology Strategy and was being developed in tandem with the growth of the CCC and the introduction of self-service over the lifetime of the programme. 

A Customer Satisfaction Survey was commissioned in March 2017 from an external telephone contractor to establish a baseline of satisfaction. 500 district residents took part. It was discovered that:

·         The most common customer service contact was about bin collection and recycling (22%);

·         Planning was second (17%);

·         62% contacted the council by phone;

·         Only 9% used the website;

·         58% thought that it was easy to find the right information or resolve an enquiry on the website.

The survey will be repeated annually to track how customer’s satisfaction was changing over the lifetime of the programme.

The Website Development Board had spent considerable time looking at usage patterns of the EFDC website in preparation for a full re-design in 2018. In particular this had highlighted that:

·         access through mobile devices and tablets now accounted for 48% of all visits (20% increase since 2013);

·         30 individual pages, representing 4.4% of the total, accounted for half of page views;

·         Data from multiple reports gives a consistent picture of the services most used by customers: Planning and Building, Contact EFDC, Payment Services, Job Vacancies, Waste Collection Dates and Council Tax.

The current website has approximately 3800 pages and a new structure to reduce the number of permanent pages to around 350 was being designed. The intended style would follow the trend in local government towards a ‘gov.uk’ approach and would be tested by customers throughout.  It was anticipated that a soft launch of the new site would happen during summer 2018.

As for telephony issues it was noted that the abandoned call-rate had dropped. The service would focus on resolving customer enquiries at their first point of contact. This would be measured using a tool called “Wrap-codes” which would require officers to categorise the outcome of every call before accepting another.

Councillor Brookes noted the changing faces of the receptionist and wondered how they were finding their new work. Ms Shaw replied that there was a mixture of reactions to this. Some were at home with the new systems and some found that they were nervous and needed more help and support.

Councillor Patel noted that the customer service programme was key to the Council’s transformation programme. He would like to know what were the barriers that had been encountered to the changes being made. He was told that people did not always like change, especially in the short time taken for this programme; they had to get them used to doing things in new ways. Being the first ones was always difficult, but this had now eased.

Councillor Patel commented that in embracing the new technology it sped up our response times; what were the red flags triggers that you would receive if there was any slippage and how had the improvements benefitted us. Ms Shaw said that they had not built the CRM module as yet, however, they did not get a lot of complaints compared to the number of contacts they had. At present it was down to having personal contacts that would alert her to any red flags received. Going forward initially her team leaders would pick up any problems coming up and either deal with it or pass it up to her.

Councillor Baldwin agreed the website needed rationalisation and simplification. He noted that it was currently quite difficult to search on planning applications. He was told that they were looking to use ‘Wordpress’ as the foundation to the core pages and were also looking  at investing money in creating a unified look and feel where different systems are used. They were looking to rationalise the website and were looking at just having three clicks to get to any page on there.

Councillor Wixley asked if the officers that answered the telephone had their own induction course. He was told by a resident that they had been given the wrong information to their inquiry and as a consequence they were going from EFDC to Essex County Council. Ms Shaw said that it was difficult to keep their knowledge base up to date; this was a continual process. They started their new staff by answering email queries as there was less pressure on them to respond immediately. They spent about two or three weeks building up their knowledge base before going on to answer the telephone. Also providing information on our website would be a good start, making it clear just what we were responsible for.

Councillor Neville agreed that the website had too many pages, a lot of which were old and out of date. How would this be addressed? Ms Shaw said that was partly the reason they wanted to reduce the pages to around 350. These could then be continually updated by ourselves and the Public Relations section. Some pages will also be given ‘due by’ dates that would hide themselves when they became out of date.

Councillor Patel asked where the Key Performance Indicators for the new customer service would go to, the main Overview and Scrutiny Committee or to the Select Committees. Mr Macnab realised that they were many cross cutting objectives that this would cover. This would have to be discussed with the Select Committee chairmen.

Councillor Mohindra applauded the new customer contact centre and the upskilling of the staff to run it. He asked if there was any capacity for additional workloads especially if any work came down to us from county, with a budget. He was told that there was, as there was some extra capacity built in for any unforeseen expansion needed.

Councillor Mohindra noted that Essex CC was also revamping their website and we may wish liaise with them.

This item was brought to a close with Ms Shaw saying that if members had any other queries they were welcome to contact her directly.