Customer First programme - Annual Report 2023 to 2024

In 2025 we are focusing heavily on AI and digital developments, with lots of our opportunities for improvements coming from our ‘Creativity Camps’ held during the ‘Year of Creativity’.

Customer Contact eXcellence Programme (CCXP) is a programme of work with the aim to better manage customer demand whilst improving customer experience. AI will be introduced across some of our contact platforms, such as telephone (to get you the right answer quickly, or to the right person who can answer your query quickly), our website via Search and Chat services and internally with the use of Microsoft Co-Pilot to enhance and reduce time taken to complete administrative tasks.

Buckinghamshire Council, as a local authority is committed to operational efficiency and delivering an excellent customer experience. The adoption of AI is about enhancing our service delivery model to be more efficient, responsive, and cost-effective.

The process of migrating our online forms and processes to our new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system will be complete in summer 2025. This milestone marks just the beginning of our journey to continuously enhance the quality of our online services and introduce new services to the CRM platform. Our goal is to ensure that more customers can enjoy the benefits of a modern CRM, leading to improved communication and effortless self-service.

As a small team, the Customer First leads cannot solely focus on delivering training. To expand the reach of the customer experience programme, it is essential to train other staff members to deliver the training themselves. This is particularly important for our 'Managing Difficult and Complex Conversation' workshops, which have seen incredible demand that one team alone cannot fulfil. This approach ensures that the costs of delivering this training are kept to a minimum and maintains consistency in delivery for our culture development.

As an organisation, we understand the needs and challenges some people face when using online services. We are committed to offering excellent digital services for our customers, while also providing telephone and face-to-face support for our vulnerable customers.

We recognise that some residents are keen to learn how to use digital services. To support them, we are creating video tutorials on managing online applications, processes, and guides. These tutorials will help people navigate their requests online and serve as a valuable resource for those who have expressed a need for this type of support through the Customer Partnership Panel.

The Customer First programme sets out three promises to our council customers; specifically, around the experience they should expect:

• Easy for them to contact us, easy to get what they need
• Helpful –we aim to get things right first time
• Fair and honest in our approach so that we’re clear and transparent about what we can and can’t offer, and the reasons why

We often work with council services that offer complex services to navigate lengthy, challenging, and sometimes hard-to-explain processes, ensuring that customers' needs are prioritised according to our three promises.

This year, we are committed to working with our SEND team (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities services) to keep customers informed after submitting an application for an assessment, overcome communication challenges, and focus on providing the most time-efficient service for them.

January to February

• AI market research and trials. Prepare documentation to move forward with proposals
• Migration of CRM forms to new platform. Long term programme in motion
• Continue to expand the use of the 8X8 Telephony platform.

March

• Prepare Customer First Annual Report
• Publish new customer focused training and protocols. Supporting staff to have difficult conversations
• Test and trial AI products internally to assist staff with admin tasks.

April to May

• Publish Customer First Annual Report
• Start procurement of AI chatbot
• Simplify website navigation

June to August

• Aim to increase use of online forms. Promote and encourage the use of forms by customers
• Create and publish video tutorials. To assist customers to use online processes and applications
• Complete replication of current forms and migration to new CRM platform
• Enhance website search functionality

September to December

• Implement AI-driven external chatbots. Trained to answer service-related queries across various contact platforms (telephone, website search, chat services)
• Grow customer partnership panel members. Through targeted recruitment campaigns
• Train staff to deliver 'Managing difficult and complex conversation' workshops

Ongoing

• Review and improve high-volume online customer journeys
• Work with the send service to improve communication and provide efficient services
• Gain a detailed understanding of user behaviour through data analysis and user research
• Identify and fix website content with missing, wrong or ambiguous information
• Change resident behaviour to increase take-up of self-service options through a communications campaign
• Implement improved processes and provide more self-service options through the CRM migration programme