Agenda item

To consider and comment on the Council’s draft Customer Experience Strategy.

The Committee considered a report, set out at Agenda pages 73 to 88, which gave details of the draft Customer Experience Strategy which provided direction and focus around improving the experience for customers interacting with WBC. The draft Customer Experience Strategy 2023/28 was appended to the report.

Sarah Kerr (Executive Member for Climate Emergency and Resident Services) attended the meeting to present the report and answer Member questions. Also in attendance were Sally Watkins (Chief Operating Officer) and Jackie Whitney (Strategic Lead – Customer, Change, Digital and IT).

The report stated that the Customer Experience Strategy addressed several ‘pain points’ for customers which were identified through feedback gathered over the previous 12 months. Feedback and input has been gathered from the Council’s workforce, residents, businesses, partners and community groups to inform the content and design of the strategy. This included the Equality Forum, CLASP and the Youth Council.

It was clear that residents had inconsistent customer experiences when they interacted with the Council. There were pockets of excellence, but the customer experience was not owned by everyone. The strategy outlined the vision and ambition around delivering a more consistent customer experience. Key points included:

·           the strategy covered five years - WBC did not currently have a Customer Experience Strategy that set a direction or areas of focus for improvement;

·           the Strategy aligned to the Council Plan around ‘Changing the way we work for you’ and ‘Being the best we can be’. It also aligned to the Equality Plan;

·           within the Strategy, the Customer Charter defined the type of experience customers should receive when they interact with the Council;

·           the Strategy drove the use of Customer data and insight as part of delivering a more customer-centric culture based on a foundation of continuous improvement across the Council;

·           savings could be realised as a result of better customer experiences, reducing the cost of failure and avoidable demand, and channel shift to improved digital services;

·           the term ‘customer’ referred to anyone that interacted with the Council – it was terminology that would be tested again during public consultation;

·           the format had been designed in a way that made it easy for people to understand – an Easy Read version would also be made available.

In the ensuing discussion, Members made the following points:

How would success be measured in the journey to customer excellence? It was confirmed that adopting suitable KPIs would be essential. Pilot projects in service areas such as housing would help to understand and measure the customer experience. Feedback from these pilot projects would be submitted to Overview and Scrutiny for comment. The Council was also using the Govmetric system which measured issues such as contacting the Council, friendliness and helpfulness of staff and the level of first time fixes. Service surveys using freestyle comment boxes would also be used.

The development of insights would take time and resources – how would this process be managed? It was confirmed that this would be part of the Council’s Organisational Development Programme, supported by the business intelligence team. Customer focus groups would also be used to gather data and feedback.

It was important to ensure that technology was able to support delivery of the new strategy. It was confirmed that the aim was to deliver first time fixes and to ensure that map based systems provided accurate, up-to-date information to customers. Further progress reports on the implementation of the Esri mapping system would be provided to Members in due course.

RESOLVED That:

1)     Sarah Kerr and the supporting Officers be thanked for attending the meeting to present the draft strategy and answer Member questions;

2)     the draft Customer Experience Strategy be welcomed and supported;

3)     comments and feedback from the Committee be incorporated into the draft Customer Experience Strategy prior to its submission to the Executive.