2.1 At the meeting of full Council on 18 December 2008 the overall vision, objectives and principles of a Council-wide Customer Services Strategy were endorsed.

2.2 A proposed programme has now been developed based on targeted improvements building towards a vision rather than a single large scale change project. Given the emerging budget position, consultation with departments has identified that the appetite for cross-cutting, risky and front-loaded investment in this area is limited.

2.3 Customer services has the potential to support the efficiency agenda through targeted reductions in avoidable contact and through effective management of the customer interface towards cost-effective channels eg. face-to-face contact to web. The KPMG pathfinder study also identified that a common approach to assessment across the organisation could deliver efficiencies.

2.4 Development of a robust Council-wide business case identifying cash -releasing efficiencies has not proven possible given the current lack of baseline information in departments. In addition, high risks are associated with delivery of benefits within any business case as they will be dependent on significant business and organisational change.

2.5 It is therefore proposed that the programme for this year is broken into three streams of activity:

(i) development of the Council-wide Customer Services strategy as set out in the December report to Council, communication of this strategy and establishment of a network of champions across departments for its delivery and execution. The establishment of a baseline of performance of Customer Contact consistent with national standards and benchmarked with other authorities;

(ii) agreeing a structured approach to business process review focused on improving customer experience, reducing avoidable contact and moving customer contact towards cost-effective channels. The reviews will form the basis to move to a Common Assessment Model across the Council. Undertaking a pilot review in one service area (Revenues & Benefits) in 2009/10. Based on the success of this review, planning for extension of this approach across other service areas in 2010/11 and its alignment with the `Right First Time' review approach currently adopted by Services for Communities;

(iii) a series of projects designed to build capability and capacity within the organisation including:

2.6 The opportunity has been taken to consolidate the proposed ten workstreams from the December Council report by the project team into these three workstreams. It should be noted that the revised programme does not now include the deployment of an enterprise-wide customer relationship management (CRM) system or work to design and develop a common approach to assessment across the Council.

3 Approach

3.1 A short-life project team was established and led by E-Government. This included staff from BT, Finance, Financial Services, Customer Services and PSP functions. Heads of Service were identified from each department to operate as a sounding board for the project team in the development of the outline programme plan.

3.2 A short video has been produced by the project team, supported by the video production team in Children & Families and various departmental staff to provide an overview of what customer experience of Council services currently is and the potential if the principles of the Corporate Customer Services Strategy are applied. This video is intended to practically demonstrate the principles outlined within the Corporate Customer Services Strategy approved by Council in December. It is recommended that this video is used as a key part of the communication and change management campaign associated with the programme.

3.3 The opportunity has been taken to subscribe to the SOCITM Customer Access Improvement Service. This UK-wide benchmarking service, supported by the LGA, is aimed at enabling Councils to measure and benchmark their performance on customer satisfaction and value for money across the three main customer access channels of web, phone and face to face. It has been established to allow authorities to focus on Customer Access improvement based on the findings of the UK Government's Varney Report. It will provide a framework for developing a baseline of existing performance across the Council, a tool for comparing our performance with others and a network for sharing experiences.

3.4 Building on the customer service vision outlined in October and the departmental workshops held in August/September the project team have continued to refine proposals and thinking. Significant progress has been made, in particular:

3.5 The proposed programme for 2009/10 does not include the specification and development of proposals for implementation of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Two issues have led the Project Team to make this recommendation:

The plan does include further development of the Contact Logging database which has been deployed in the Contact Centre to record contact across Services for Communities. This service development will (a) provide important baseline information to support comparison through the SOCITM service with other authorities; and, (b) inform future requirement specification for a Council-wide system.

3.6 It should be noted that this incremental strategy without CRM investment has been adopted by a number of other Councils such as Liverpool and Fife, and should support significant early improvement to Customer Access. However, the Scottish Government's Customer First programme, in which it is proposed that electronic messages are passed between public sector agencies and a national citizen portal, will be dependent on the Council establishing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. It should be noted that the national approach is still under development and pilot authorities are yet to design and test its operation. It is recommended that the Council reconsiders its strategy based on experience over the next year and maintains a watching brief on national developments.

3.7 The team has also considered a programme of business process review in order to put in place new ways of working outlined in the Customer Services vision presented to Council in December. Experience indicates that significant change management will be required and two approaches have been considered:

3.8 Given the need to deliver measurable results as quickly as possible and the limited resources available it is proposed that a rolling programme of functional reviews is adopted. This approach is considered less risky and will deliver practical results at an earlier date.

3.9 It is proposed that the initial review is targeted at the Revenues & Benefits service which is one of the highest volume areas of customer contact and will therefore have maximum impact. Results of an initial review, if support could be quickly put in place, could be completed before December to allow reflection into a programme of reviews in other service areas for 2010/11.

4 Proposed Customer Services Programme 2009/10

4.1 The project team have outlined a work programme and series of milestones for 2009/10 for those projects where funding is available or has been committed. Key milestones include:

5 Governance

5.1 It is proposed that a Programme Board will provide oversight for the Programme within the context of Achieving Excellence. This will be co-chaired by the Director of Corporate Services and Health & Social Care involving both project leads and representatives from all service departments.

5.2 Project and programme office support will be provided by considering the potential of secondment of staff from the Talent Pool or backfilling of specialists from Divisions within Corporate Services.

6 Financial Implications

6.1 The current and projected balances of the BT Efficiency Fund held in reserves are £1.125m in 2009/10, rising to £2.763m in 2010/11 and £6.196m in 2011/12.

6.2 In addition savings from the implementation of the new telephony contract have currently been ring-fenced for potential reinvestment in support of the Customer Services strategy. Efficiency savings of £322k are anticipated in 2009/10, rising to £872k in 2010/11 and £1,274k in 2011/12.

6.3 Total one-off costs for the programme of the activities outlined at 4.1, not currently containable within departmental budgets, are estimated at a maximum of £1.3m over the 2009/10 and 2010/11 financial years with these estimates assigned to the constituent work stream as follows:

It is recommended that the programme, subject to approval of final costs and business case for the Web Content Management project by Directors of Corporate Services and Finance, is funded by:

7 Environmental Impact

7.1 It is anticipated that the proposed Customer Services programme has the potential to realise significant environmental improvements particularly through the reduction of printed output and through the movement of customer contact to more efficient and effective channels. Work to date has identified that accurate baseline information is not readily available from departments. A critical activity of the proposed service review programme will be to establish a baseline from which to measure improvement.