Customer First programme - Annual Report 2022 to 2023

We’ve enhanced our customer service training offering to include a course aimed at equipping people with the knowledge and tools to deal with complex or difficult conversations in a calm and supported way. It gives people the chance to look at how they personally deal with conflict, and how they can understand the impact being in this type of situation has on them and the customer.

Customers views are vital to shaping the council’s vision for the future. Our Customer Partnership Panel is an opportunity for residents, to give us advice on:

• our website
• our forms
• the other ways we communicate, such as letters, emails or updates

We will listen to feedback and look for ways to improve further. Anyone who is over 18 and resident in Buckinghamshire is welcome to join. Find out how to join the Customer Partnership Panel.

We want our hard copy correspondence to be managed as efficiently as possible. Our Digital Post Room was launched recently, with the first phase being the Digital Incoming Mail process. Scanning tens of thousands of pieces of post, delivered to colleagues digitally, meaning letters reach staff quickly to be processed and actioned.

The second phase of the project, the Digital Outbound Print and Post process, is currently going live. This allows colleagues to print and post a letter from any location where they are working.

They can also customise the letter or even add a physical stock item such as a leaflet or pre-paid envelope to the letter before it is posted, providing a streamlined customer experience.

Document translation is a vital service for our customers whose first language may not be English.

We’re trialling a service, developed by another UK council and Amazon Web Services, that provides this translation in less than 10 minutes at a fraction of the cost by using open-source technology and machine translation.

Our online contact form has been completely rebuilt in 2023 to help our customers to find what they need the first time they come to our website.

Sometimes, people may be overwhelmed by the website content and use the contact form instead. This means they ask a question when the answer could only be a few clicks away. The newly built form means the customer is now walked through our processes and are prompted to use our full suite of digital tools and guidance.

Throughout the process we promote webchat, utilising our virtual assistant feature. We nudge them in the direction of interactive web forms, encouraging them to self-serve. We channel the customer through this triage first, putting the answer at their fingertips and keeping them on their digital journey.

How do you measure success? Or where we need to make improvements? It is important to listen to the views of our residents so we can find out what they like, and where things could be better. The best way to do this is through simple, instant feedback, to help gain a view of how people feel.

We do this through our Happy or Not feedback surveys. At the end of some of our service requests, the customer is invited give feedback digitally. This could be a smiling face, or an angry face, depending on their opinion. They are also encouraged to write a few words of text if they feel strongly about something.

This real-time data helps us to see hour by hour how residents feel. It helps us to identify ‘pain points’, where the customer experience needs improving. We intend to increase the use of these into 2024, to get a better understanding of customer opinion.

We’re in the process of implementing a new web-based telephone platform, designed to connect our customers with the professional help they need, across all service areas that talk directly to customers.

The platform enables better functionality such as call recording, better reporting to look at performance and training opportunities as well as gives the customers clearer expectations on call wait times, gives a call back function, and allows them to give feedback after the call.

At Buckinghamshire Council, we recognise the power of conversation. It is important we keep a dialogue open between our service areas and the customer services team. We need to evaluate the effectiveness of the Customer First programme, and to further support service areas and teams to achieve their customer objectives.

In 2023, we introduced Customer Maturity Reports. These work both ways; helping the Customer First team measure the extent to which the aims of the programme have been explained to services, and helping to establish where services may need extra support. We look at all aspects of customer delivery, suggest improvements, and celebrate success.

This is monitored throughout the year with regular account management sessions between service areas and customer services, to strengthen the bond of continuous improvement, to keep alive those conversations.

Fix My Street is a map based website and app that allows customers to report issues that might happen on the roads, such as a pothole, broken street light, trees and fly-tipping. This system ensures the customer can accurately locate the place where the issue is occurring and allows the council to direct the enquiry to the right place automatically, even if it’s another organisation who has responsibility for the issue. 66,120 reports using Fix My Street in 2023, meaning customers raise their issue directly onto Fix My Street, and customers are kept updated with their report automatically, reducing ongoing repeated contact into the council.

During 2023, improvements in digital processes on Fix My Street saved the council £55,335 in staff processing time.

Recognising the increasing demand for instant assistance and round- the-clock availability, we have invested in the development of a chatbot service. This virtual assistant providing prompt and accurate responses to the most common customer queries, improving response times and overall satisfaction.

We help services keep residents informed and updated. We promote the use of ‘push notifications’, where an email or SMS text message is sent keeping the customer up to date.

This has been used in Home to School Transport, Household waste services, and many other areas. We plan to use it more over 2024, particularly with our new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that will be shared across all parts of the council.

We use data to help our teams work out what matters. It may be something small, like helping Environmental Health work out which type of household pest is reported the most. Or something major, like monitoring all telephone lines. All of this helps improve our understanding of our customers and how best to support them.

Having all these tools in place to help find areas for improvement using data, make process developments and implement new systems means we are in a great position to help other services that need some support in making things better for their customers.

For example, have worked with the Home to School Transport team to bring in a new payment and telephony system, as well as other process improvements, to improve the way customers can communicate with the team, the team can communicate with customers and bring their payments system inline with customer expectations.