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Business Case – Channel Shift Document Control Version Number

Date of issue

Reason for issue Author

1.0 17/12/13 To seek approval for channel

shift funding J Hutchinson

Issued to: Reason Notify of updates:

Comment

Chief Executive and Directors

For information and approval to seek funding

for channel shift

Document Approval & Sign-Off

Issued to: Compiled by: Chief Exec/Directors SLT Approval

Name: J Hutchinson

Position: Communications

Manager

Signature:

Date: 02 January 2014 13th January 2014 21st January 2014

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Document Contents 1.  Purpose................................................................................................................... 4 2.  Reasons.................................................................................................................. 4 3.  Background............................................................................................................. 5

3.1  Customer access today................................................................................. 5 3.1.1  Telephone .......................................................................................... 6 3.1.2   Website ............................................................................................ 7 3.1.3  Face to face ...................................................................................... 9 3.1.4   Payments ........................................................................................ 10

4.  Summary of insight ............................................................................................... 11 5.  Drivers for Improvement........................................................................................ 12 6.  Options.................................................................................................................. 12 

6.1  Do nothing ................................................................................................... 12 6.2  Digital by default .......................................................................................... 12 6.3  Refine access.............................................................................................. 12 

6.3.1  Target operating model .................................................................... 13 6.3.2   Service area business cases........................................................... 15 6.3.3. Promotion and marketing ................................................................. 17

7.  Benefits ................................................................................................................. 17 8.  Key considerations / risks ..................................................................................... 18 9.  Costs..................................................................................................................... 19 10. Timescales ........................................................................................................... 19 11. Evaluation ............................................................................................................ 21 

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1. Purpose To reshape the way in which customers access services, to drive customer traffic away from the higher cost access channels to lower cost channels where this is preferred by, or acceptable to the customer. As a result the Council will save money and be better able to meet the demands of its increasing customer base, with limited budget. The scope of this project covers all core access channels such as telephone, web and face to face.

2. Reasons The Council has a responsibility to provide excellent services and value for money to the taxpayer. With budget and service cuts set to continue for the foreseeable future, delivering services is becoming more of a challenge and the Council will simply have to do more with less budget. The Council must find a more cost effective way of serving its customers; one way of doing this is to move customer contact from the more expensive channels of communication to the cheaper ones, generating a reduction in costs. The access channel costs below are specific to Blaby District Council. Channel costs 2012/13 1 Face to face £6.86 Telephone £3.17 Website £0.17 Whilst the focus is on the needs and preferences of the customer and the provision of excellent customer service; those customers that have a preference to use the website could assist the Council in making substantial savings as website costs are fixed regardless of the number of customer visits. The current profile of the district illustrates that 50% of households within the district are likely to self serve on the website. Making the web channel effective and promoting it well will mean that customers themselves will choose to use the website in preference to telephone or face to face.

1 Access channel costs, does not include full transaction cost. Web: excludes forms (transactional) and 3rd party service systems (modern.gov etc)

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3. Background

3.1 Customer access today

The Council receives an estimated 239,800 telephone calls from customers and 33,897

face to face contacts a year (not including Pavilion Leisure Centre).

195,687* unique visitors of the Council’s website viewing 1,502,217 pages, with 26,000 transactions being carried out on the site (13% of visitors transact with us)

The website provides access to a number of web enabled back office systems, some of these systems (eg planning, job vacancies) ask customers to register/login.

GovMetric is used to capture customer feedback about contact by telephone, face to

face and website. There is concern about the validity of the data available and the mechanism to obtain the feedback needs to be improved.

Limited data to inform us of the numbers and types of customer contact.

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3.1.1 Telephone KEY FACTS

The Council receives an estimated 239,800 telephone calls from customers a year.

The average cost for a call is £3.17 but it could be as much as £4.29 if the customer is redirected from customer services to the relevant back office specialist.

The Council has adopted a systems thinking approach to engaging with customers and

believes that customers should be able to speak to the service specialist rather than having a call centre ethos. 70% of all calls go direct to the service specialist via a direct dial number with the remaining 30% direct to customer services (main number).

Customers access services through 226 direct dial numbers and 9 golden numbers.

The most frequently used number is the main telephone number (0116 272 0555) for customer services (71,395 calls), followed by waste and environmental health (24,426), revenues (23,000), benefits (14,913), planning (14,440), Pavilion (10,606), building control (9,673), housing options (7,774), environmental health services (7,384). The remaining 55,000 calls cut across a range of other services (community services, land charges etc)

Limited access to the Council offices and Joint Service Shop as they are only open 5 days of the week for 41 ¼ hours. Although an out of hours emergency line is provided.

Calls range on average from 2 minutes to almost 11 minutes across the breadth of services.

The main telephone number (0116 275 0555) generally acts as a switchboard and transfers calls to the relevant department. On average a call to the main telephone number costs £1.12.

Customer services and housing options are the only two areas that use the customer relationship management system. In customer services data is keyed into the customer relationship management system and then re-keyed into the back office system. There is no integration between systems, which results in longer processing times and additional transaction time/cost. Housing options have replaced their back office system so that their customer interactions are now logged and tracked with the customer relationship management system.

Although Gov Metric is in place there is limited customer satisfaction data available within services

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3.1.2 Website The Channel Shift Strategy will build on work already carried out on the new Council website. The new website (launched 29th May 2013) is based on a new design focussing around top tasks, an enhanced search capability and the tools to allow customers to apply and pay for services online. It is also mobile friendly, allowing customers to access the site from smart phones and tablets. The website will provide the basis for further development to ensure customers can self serve and carryout transactional services online. KEY FACTS

The website was named one of the top 20 best websites in the country after it was awarded four stars by SOCITM. It is one of only 13 district councils to achieve four stars – the highest possible rating.

195,687* unique visitors of the Council’s website viewing 1,502,217 pages, with 26,000

transactions being carried out on the site (13% of visitors transact with us)

On average customers spending just over 3 minutes navigating the website and viewing 4 pages each time they visit.

It costs the Council 17p for a customer to use the website as an access channel

People who access the website from mobile devices are on the increase, from 14% during 2012/13 to 26% in 2013/14.

Where the Council does offer self serve, there is evidence to show that customers do want to transact with the Council online:-

o 48% of all planning applications submitted online during 2012/13 o Bulky item requests online naturally increased by 42% from 2012/13 to 2013/14. o Customers wanting to find out their refuse and recycling collection day is offered

on the website. There is clear demand for this service with 97% of requests carried out online.

Accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Submitted online forms go to service department email inboxes. Details are re-keyed into the back office systems, resulting in duplication of effort and additional transaction time/cost.

Limited number of apply and pay services available as technology to facilitate only installed September 2013. Developing bulky item collections, car parking permits and building control applications (saving £600 a year on Submit a Plan portal).

A couple of systems on the website already require the user to login to carryout a transaction. Customers would be required to login in several locations as more systems are web enabled. This will burden the customer as they will have to remember many different passwords for the website.

More robust method of collecting satisfaction data required, providing the Council with more in depth information to improve service provision

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Social media is promoted on the website and Facebook and Twitter users are on the increase. Facebook and Twitter for the Council was launched in January 2011. Facebook users have increased by 39% during the last year and Twitter followers have increased by 37%. Whilst the ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ are not considerable at 321 and 1520 respectively, we are engaging with customers more on these platforms and post on average 15 - 20 messages a month. In terms of Twitter on average one message that is posted (tweeted) is re-tweeted by almost 700 users of Twitter. A Social Media Strategy is in place and Facebook and Twitter is managed by the Communications Team.

A number of solutions are used to monitor and measure website performance, accessibility and usage - SiteMorse, SiteImprove and Google Analytics:-

o Ranked no 4 in last quarterly review of local authority websites for performance and accessibility by SiteMorse

o Broken link reports received and acted upon regularly

o Analytics data available on:-

Total unique visitors Total visits Page visits – number of visits to each page Search terms – the top search words used on the site Online forms – number of submissions Payments – number of payments of each type made online Exit pages Reports to identify top task pages for each section of the website

A dispersed management model is used to update the website. Editorial responsibility is spread throughout departments and trained editors have direct access to edit pages and submit them for approval to the Communications team. The individual editors control content for which they have specialist knowledge or expertise. Although this is very successful in some areas of the authority, not all services have taken ownership of pages on the website. In these cases the content is stale, inaccurate, not written in a customer friendly manner or regularly reviewed.

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3.1.3 Face to face KEY FACTS

The Council has 4 buildings, 3 of these are accessible by the public:- o Main Council offices, Narborough o Joint Service Shop, Blaby o Pavilion Leisure Centre, Huncote.

The Council receives an estimated 33,897 face to face contacts a year to the Main

Council offices and Joint Service Shop. The Pavilion Leisure Centre receives an additional 47,430 people, these are either for meetings with the leisure services team or leisure customers of the centre.

The average face to face access channel cost is £6.86 Limited access to the Council offices and Joint Service Shop as they are only open 5

days of the week for 41 ¼ hours

Main Council offices are located in village and difficult to access by public transport. Face to face is the least favoured access channel by customers due to customer lifestyle and location of the offices.

Application forms and leaflets are available at the main offices and Joint Service Shop.

Many of these leaflets are have not been made available for customers on the website.

Limited qualitative customer satisfaction data

Limited understanding of types and frequency of demand for services

All information obtained from customer is input into back office systems where possible at that point of contact; or batched and updated at a later date.

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3.1.4 Payments KEY FACTS

The Council provides:- o Card payments can be taken face to face and over the telephone (operator

assisted) o 24 hour automated telephone payment line o Ability for customers to make cash payments through AllPay and at the main

offices o Direct debits o Standing orders o Website allows customers to pay their bills online. A technical solution was

implemented in September 2013 which allows customers to pay for a range of services online by debit or credit card, without the need for them to have received a bill or invoice. Initial developments include car parking permit applications, bulky item collection bookings/payment and work is being carried out to develop building control application submissions/payments.

The most frequently used method for customers to make a payment to the Council is by

direct debit (68.35%). Payments made by standing order are 2nd at 7.87% followed by AllPay at 6.39%. Web payments rank 5th at just over 3%.

Each direct debit payment costs the Council 14p to collect.

If a customer pays online it costs the Council: 14p by credit card. 32p by debit card (18p bank charge included). These figures are in addition to the website visit cost of 17p and are based on current volumes of payment transactions (19,598).

Approximately 80,000 bills are printed and distributed by post to customers each year;

51,000 of these relate to Council tax and 25,700 for waste bin invoices and reminders. In addition to bills there is other bulk correspondence sent out to customers that could be sent electronically and this is includes 41,000 letters to Council tax customers.

The cost of printing, folding, enveloping and distributing bulk distributions of Council tax

or waste bills is 0.40p for each bill; the process is automated and involves machines. The cost of individual distribution of bills could be higher as they are produced and enveloped manually.

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4. Summary of insight

o The customer when contacting the Council may have to provide the same information to different service areas. This is particularly the case with the telephone.

o We are not collecting sufficient information to understand customer demand (type and frequency) and cannot easily measure service improvement.

o Additional back office workload is created as a result of limited intelligent form integration

o Some customer contact is ‘avoidable’ and services need to be redesigned so that unnecessary, valueless contact which is both frustrating for the customer and inefficient for the Council is eliminated. We will use systems thinking to identify these contacts and design processes that reduce the need for customers to make contact with the public sector multiple times to complete one transaction.

o Need to improve how we collect and record satisfaction data so that we understand if we are meeting customer expectations

o Need to improve the management and review of content on the website.

o Customers will be required to login in several locations (potentially with different passwords) on the website as more systems are web enabled. If a customer wants to find out information about their own accounts on the website, this will be more complex and expensive to implement as authentication is likely to be required. To improve the customer experience customers should ideally only be required to login once to access any of the web enabled systems. Whether a single sign in approach or individual logins are implemented, it is likely that considerable initial investment would be needed and there would be a much greater need to ensure that visitors and transaction numbers are high. If services cannot attract sufficient volumes of traffic and achieve high unassisted completion rates it will not yield benefits.

o Web transactional usage is very low when compared to site visits.

o Cannot easily switch to self serve due to a lack of capability. o High volume services with customer groups that are likely to channel shift should be

able to view their accounts online, moving customers to a less costly access channel. Mosaic profiling indicates that 50% of households in the district are inclined to self serve. The possibility of moving 50% of customers to self serve would allow significant costs savings.

o Responsive design with self serve is a key factor as more people use mobile devices to access the web.

o Switching 50% of the 51,000 Council tax bills (annual) year to electronic distribution could save £10,200 a year.

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5. Drivers for Improvement The key objectives are:-

1. Better able to serve increasing customer base, with limited budget.

2. To drive customer traffic away from higher cost access channels to lower cost channels where this is preferred by, or acceptable to customers.

3. To improve the customer experience/customer satisfaction

4. To save money 5. To make it possible for customers to access most appropriate services online

6. Provide consistent access across all channels

6. Options

6.1 Do nothing Do nothing – is not an option as the Council needs to find a way of serving its increasing customer demand within ever reducing resources.

6.2 Digital by default Digital by default – whilst it is recognised that demand for digital services is increasing to drive all customers to digital channels at this time would be inappropriate, the Council does not want to exclude those in the district that are less digitally engaged including the ageing and vulnerable population.

6.3 Refine access To realise benefits from a shift to self service, we have to target processes and service areas where a shift is likely to produce savings and customers are highly inclined to self serve. Mosaic Public Sector interprets and organises households into categories, based on their characteristics, preferences and needs. There are 15 groups or at a more detailed level 69 types of classification. The predominant groups in Blaby District, making up 83.4% of households are E, B, J, F & D. The groups with the highest inclination towards self serving on the website and would therefore channel shift are E, F & D (50% of households). These represent the people whose needs and behaviour will drive the benefits of our Channel Shift Strategy.

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Customer group

Description % in district

Age group Shift propensity

Likely to use social network site

E Middle income families living in moderate suburban semis

23.56 41-55 High 15%

B Residents of small and mid-sized towns with strong local roots

18.40 56+ Average 10%

J Owner occupiers in older-style housing in ex-industrial areas

14.95 66+ but some representation in the 36-45 age group

Average 13%

F Couples with young children in comfortable modern housing

13.88 31-45 Very high 22%

D Successful professionals living in suburban or semi-rural homes

12.60 51-65 High 12%

The challenge is to reduce telephone call and face to face volumes without sacrificing customer service or satisfaction. It is important to improve the information on the website and make transactions and processes efficient so that customers are encouraged by the ease of use. If customer channels are managed together shift can actively be encouraged from one channel to another. Customer advisers on the telephone and face to face can play a key role in making customers aware of self service options. With this in mind the Strategy is to:

Implement the target operating model Produce service area business cases:-

o Identify transactions to migrate across to self serve o Reduce ‘avoidable’ contact and duplication of effort

Prioritise transactions and develop technical side Promotion and marketing

6.3.1 Target operating model

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We will take into account the varying needs and capabilities of customers in accessing

different services, but where appropriate transactions will be developed for self serve

The customer experience will improve and be consistent across channels. Services will receive a collective view of a customer and not different views of the same individual.

The majority of enquiries and transactions will be resolved within the lower cost web access channel

Where the current process is for customer to complete a paper based form and make payment, these processes will be developed for self serve, making it much quicker and easier for customers to apply for services online.

Customers will be encouraged to register on the website so they can self serve their accounts, through a single sign on approach providing a seamless user experience across multiple web enabled systems.

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A single data base of customer contact details and profiles of customers is probably one of the most important elements of channel shift. Once a profile exists for a customer it becomes possible to automatically provide the appropriate message or information via the preferred channel at the correct time. This could be a simple notification to residents informing that the refuse and recycling collections are suspended due to snow and ice via text or email. It could also be a prompt to renew a parking permit, licence or reminder to bring specific documents to an interview. In addition it could be used for e-marketing and e-consultation saving print and postage costs and resulting in further efficiencies for the Council. The concept of a single record view of the customer and their history of contact with the authority (through all access channels) will ultimately enhance the customer experience and their satisfaction with the service.

To gain maximum benefit from the website and avoid errors, wherever possible this

channel should be integrated into the relevant back office systems to remove double entry of data and speed the processing of online transactions. Developing a systems thinking approach, focusing on eliminating waste and duplication.

6.3.2 Service area business cases Further analysis and detail is required to identify digital opportunities within services. A service specific business case will be developed providing analysis of current processes, costs and potential efficiency and savings for each area within the Council. The first business case to be developed will focus on Council tax and Business rates looking at exactly how each of the identified services are currently being delivered and the costs involved. The data will be analysed to identify how the web can be utilised in order to encourage channel shift, and deliver a better service to the customer. In each area we will gather:-

Access channel costs Establish customer profile and the percentage of customers inclined to self serve Identify high volume transactions / and those with long processing times. Which of the above could be moved across to self serve? Conduct research on take up figures in similar authorities Time taken to process a transaction Avoidable contact within the process Cost of transaction from start to finish

The project will initially focus on Council Tax and Business Rates, but this strategy will be adopted across all services with the roll out focussing on those services with high demand or long processing times. There will also be cross cutting themes to consider such as e-billing, consultation and marketing. The service areas in priority order are as follows:-

Council tax Benefits Waste and recycling Planning Environmental health Housing Building control

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Detailed investigation will identify which processes within these service areas are in scope for service migration. Identify transactions for self serve The initial approach will be to analyse the type and frequency of demand across all services, identifying high volume transactions and those with long processing times. The transactions will be assessed to establish if they can be moved across to self serve and costed based on delivery via face to face and telephone access channels. To realise benefits from a shift to self-service, we have to target processes and service areas where a shift is likely to produce savings. Such savings can only be achieved when the cost of the new self-service option including any support to it is lower than the customer contact with the existing channels. The case for self service will depend on exceeding a minimum volume of transactions. If either the volume of transactions or level of support necessary seems unachievable, then the channel shift should not be attempted. Reduction in ‘avoidable’ contact and duplication of effort. Processes will be re-designed for self service making them more efficient and standardising the way they are implemented across services. Using a systems thinking approach, focus will be on eliminating waste and duplication. In order to achieve the user volumes and high levels of transactions completed by self serve, the ‘service proposition’ must be attractive, intuitive and easy to complete. If this is not the case then the customer is either not going to attempt the transaction; will start the transaction on the web channel and then switch to another channel; or will achieve the outcome via this channel only with significant and costly support from other non-digital channels.

To gain maximum benefit from the website and avoid errors, wherever possible processes should be integrated into the relevant back office systems to remove double entry of data and speed the processing of online transactions.

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Prioritise transactions and develop technical side The list of transactions identified (high volume/long processing times) will be ordered in priority of implementation. If the proposed new customer journey is not yet technically possible further development will be needed. This will be fully costed within the business case to see if the investment will be worthwhile. This phase of the project will result in front end and back office systems being integrated to ensure transactions are automated, and remove requirement for services to manually process.

6.3.3. Promotion and marketing Once we have established that the new channel is appropriate for our customers and it has been implemented, we can then start to promote it. This could be through simple activities, and by using staff themselves as advocates, or we can use campaigns and marketing activity to increase the take up of new channels. When designing marketing campaigns, they should be developed with customer insight in mind so that they are as effective as possible at reaching their target audience. We know which channels our different customer segments are receptive to as well as those they are not receptive to. Therefore we can ensure we use the most appropriate communication methods for our target audience. If customer channels are managed together shift can actively be encouraged from one channel to another. Customer advisers on the telephone and face to face channels can play a key role in making customers aware of self service options.

7. Benefits Cost reduction will be as a result of reducing volumes of telephone and face to face enquiries. Falling face-to-face volumes deliver the largest cost reductions because these enquiries are most expensive to service – we have estimated that on average, a face-to-face enquiry costs £6.86, a telephone enquiry £3.17, and a web enquiry around £0.17. However, if web enquiries rise because of ‘channel shift’ or just because the web is easy and available 24 x 7, the cost of these additional enquiries is almost zero as the cost of the website remains static. The cost per web contact falls as volumes rise. Indicative best estimate of savings The figures below are potential savings that can be achieved based on migrating 50% of customer interaction on face to face and telephone access channels across to the website. The figures below are calculated on the seven services outlined in 6.2.2 of this report only:- Year 1.

2014/15

Year 2. 2015/16

Year 3. 2016/17

Year 4. 2017/18

Year 5. 2018/19

Year 6. 2019/20

In year saving £13,800 £52,439 £104,878 £157,317 £209,756 £275,995

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When all services have been implemented after the 5 year implementation period, it is estimated that there will be an annual saving of £275,995. In additional savings will be realised from a reduction in print and postage costs as eCommunication tools will be utilised to correspond with customers. Whilst these figures give a broad indication of the potential savings that could be made we must stress that:-

These figures do not take account of any investment that is needed in technology to achieve the overall target operating model or specific service business cases. Solutions will only be procured where a cost/benefit analysis has been conducted.

These figures are also based on migrating 50% of customers (based on Mosaic data) to self serve. Whilst this enables a calculation for realising benefits it should be understood that each service area has a different customer base – customer of certain services (eg. Benefits or housing) may not be so inclined to self serve.

These are only access channel savings and additional work will need to be carried out within services to fully understand transaction costs and the potential savings as a result of migration to self serve together with integration of data into back office systems

In addition process mapping the ideal customer journey, will identify any avoidable contact and other unnecessary waste. Analysing processes and understanding the cost of individual transactions (eg requesting a bulky item collection) could yield further savings as they are re-engineered and migrated to self service.

Also, the data on call volumes relates specifically to incoming calls from customers and does not include those occasions when we have to call the customer back due to misunderstandings or lack of capability to complete the process at first point of contact. Additional savings will no doubt be realised as outgoing telephone calls are reduced as avoidable contact is eliminated from transaction processes.

8. Key considerations / risks There are likely to be a relatively small number of services and information requests that

cause disproportionately large volumes of [avoidable] contact and focussing on these tends to yield the most rapid returns.

Simple transactions that can be fully completed by digital self-service are the ones most

likely to achieve a ‘clean’ channel shift and deliver realisable benefits as they don’t need significant investment or support to achieve true self-service.

Continue to use a consistent approach to developing transactions for completion online,

failure to do so will result in low customer satisfaction and users unable to complete processes online

The management of customer contact details. These should be held in one database

so they can be utilised (where permission is given) for e-marketing and e-consultation, further reducing print and postage costs.

Consider the cross cutting themes such as e-billing, e-consultation and e-marketing and Implement solution (if feasible) across services to facilitate customers receiving all their correspondence electronically from the Council (not just individual department), should they opt to do so.

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Organisational wide approach to implementation: Take holistic approach and not consider each service in isolation, the same task maybe able to be carried out across a number of services and should therefore be implemented (if the business case supports) in its entirety and not just for one service area eg. E-billing or self service of accounts.

Financial losses: the cheapest channel is not necessarily the most cost effective as a single successful high cost contact can be cheaper than several ineffective low cost contacts. Must make sure that customer user journey is mapped and tested before being built.

Target the right customers: sending the wrong customers to self-service may drive

increased contact demand as they will not be able to meet their needs which will result in failure and re-work costs and is likely to trigger complaints so targeting the right customers is critical.

Complex processes: the more complex the process the more costly and difficult it will be

to design and support a workable digital self-service option and for some, digital will offer useful support but be unable to replace ‘specialist advisor’ mediated contact.

Return on investment: when considering the purchase of software solutions to facilitate

moving customers to the website, any capital investment would need to be assessed against the customer experience and the potential savings that the authority could make.

9. Costs It is the intention to keep costs to a minimum ensuring best use of resources based on cost/benefit analysis. Development and procurement will be required to achieve the initial target operating model which includes a single database of customer records, single sign on solution for the website and potential integration of the land and property gazetteer and other technologies. Further exploration and investigation of solutions is required to provide a more accurate account of capital investment for the target operating model. It is recommended that £80,000 of capital is set aside for the project and periodic reports are submitted to Senior Leadership Team and Cabinet on the progress of the project and allocation of capital as the project progresses. Additional costs may be incurred as a result of transactional development and the integration of data into the back office systems. To meet this it is suggested that a proportion of savings (eg 50%) made after the initial year can be used to contribute to any development costs, should the Council wish to adopt this approach. This ensures that funding is readily available to meet the future development needs of the website.

10. Timescales Business cases would be developed within five- six month period, meanwhile work would be progressing on technical solutions for the overall target operating model.

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Timelines for transactions will become more specific once the business cases have been developed. Some transactions may be reliant on the implementation of new technologies and subject to the procurement process. TARGET OPERATING MODEL Task Officer Timescale Develop specifications and procure technology solutions to support business cases and achieve ‘target operating model’ where cost/benefit analysis demonstrates return on investment.

Service Managers/Communications Manager

May – July 2014

Review the cost/benefit of CRM and develop a business case for improving its use across the authority

Performance Manager April 2014

To ensure that any new web enabled systems provide a responsive web design so that customers can access using their smart phone or tablet device

All services Ongoing

Explore cost/benefits of single registration/sign on process on the website, providing customers with access to multiple accounts and other added benefits. Whilst considering the needs of the authority on capturing and managing customer contact details. Procure technical solution if feasible

Communications Manager April 2014 – July 2014

Investigate solutions to facilitate extraction/ integration of data into back office systems – to achieve self serve for priority transactions

Communications Manager April – December 2014

To investigate/procure a solution for the storage and management of customer contact details to provide a single record view

Communications Manager /Performance Manager

April 2014 – July 2014

BUSINESS CASES Task Officer Timescale Develop business case for each service area set out in the business case. Ensure that business cases for improvements reflect both increased public satisfaction, but also efficiency and a reduction in costs.

Service Managers Deadline June 2014.

Provide data on website most popular pages and exit pages to services. This will provide services with a priority list for improvement and help to identify which services to make ‘transactional’ and not just ‘informational’ on the web

Communications Manager For each business case but also ongoing

Reduce ‘avoidable contact’ by providing more/better information at appropriate points in the customer journey, setting service delivery expectations and delivering to these expectations

Systems Thinking Officer/Service Managers

Within re-engineer of each process for self serve

Initiate the collection of demand data across all service areas for inclusion and analysis in business case

Performance Manager As soon as possible

Develop priority list of transactions for migration to self service

Communications Manager June 2014

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PERFORMANCE/IMPROVEMENT Task Officer Timescale Implement an mechanism to collect from customers qualitative feedback on each page of the website

Communications Manager April 2014

Implement a mechanism to collect from customers qualitative feedback for telephone and face to face contact

Performance Manager April 2014

Improve the management of content on the website – including setting review dates for all pages

Communications Manager April – June 2014

Develop pre-requisite page for each online form to advise the customer of the actions within the form eg. Expected to book a date and pay online by credit or debit card

Communications Manager Ongoing as transactions are developed

Market and communicate new online interactions/transactions to service users to encourage take up.

Communications Manager/Service Manager

As new services are implemented

To place more of our leaflets and information online in order to minimise printing and reduce our environmental impact

All Service Managers Ongoing

Drive the collection of demand data across all service areas to improve understanding of customer needs and monitor outcomes of channel shift

Performance Manager Ongoing

11. Evaluation We need to measure and monitor to see if customers are changing channels and to identify if they are satisfied with the services we provide. To achieve this we need to continually monitor:-

Access channel volumes and ratios overall by channel and by service Cost per contact for self serve channels Service/transaction volumes for top tasks Visitor satisfaction by service and channel Levels of online failures, overall and by service.

We will also measure the outcome of any specific marketing and promotion of transactions and channels to identify if it has encouraged customers to switch channels.