Improving service

January 12, 2010

The Socitm Customer Access Improvement Service has published its latest (December 2009) report, which is Issue 3. It has received a great detail of reportage for its emphasis on poorly performing council web sites. I’m not sure that quite so much can be read from the cumulative data, and a bit like National Indicator 14 “avoidable contact”  believe these analyses need to take place at a more granular level and thing some of the assumptions are very subjective!

I also have a concern that a document from Socitm is making statements like the one on page 3 “The country cannot afford the current scale of the public sector.” This is a broad brush attack on all government, so includes local authorities and health trusts. This is not a decision for an IT managers organization, it’s one for the electorate since some countries, as we know, have a much higher scale of expenditure. What really matters is the quality being delivered for that expenditure, if its too high a quality or too low, the public have to decide. If too much is being spent they have to decide what services are no longer required, or whether services they can do without are being delivered. Ultimately this is the value of applications such as that used by GovMetric or the others named on my list (see below) – they give the public an opportunity to comment on the value of services delivered.

According to the report there are now 56 councils providing GovMetric data but of these only one is acknowledged to be recording data across the three major channels in one directorate or service only, which is not ideally what we should be achieving if we are to understand channel shift or manage channels at all.

Big things continue to be made about South Tyneside’s apparent channel shift around waste management, which they achieved by developing their web site as a result of feedback through the service, I would argue that all channels need to be improved and this is an end-to-end reform of services, since channels are only the presentation layer. We have a lot more experience with the face-to-face and telephone channels and have obviously some experience at delivering them, but the web is the new kid on the block, it can’t at the moment be interactive in the sense of the Turing machine.

I believe getting feedback from citizens is the way forward but I have doubts about making too much of it from the higher level generalizations that Socitm makes and I must say that the one promoted by Socitm is not the only solution – have a look at the list – Company table V8.

UPDATE - I’ve been asked by Alex Chapman of GovMetric to update on a few possible inaccuracies between my reading of the Socitm CAIS report and the state of play with GovMetric, which I am posting below -

  • “There are currently 59 authorities signed up to GovMetric with a further 9 housing associations; so, there are just under 70 users in total
  • More importantly, almost all of these are using GovMetric in a multi-channel approach measuring customer feedback and performance across at least 3 channels (F2F, phone and web) and across typically 8 services
  • An increasing number are also linking this feedback data to E&D and customer segmentation groups as well to increase their insight about what customers needs are, their experiences and their channel preferences.

 

I agree with you whole heartedly that, “if we are to understand channel shift or manage channels at all”, we do need to go beyond one service or even one channel; this is not the case with GovMetric, neither in concept nor in practice.  From a GovMetric perspective, customer feedback is not the only thing that matters, but being able to understand service demand by service, by channel, as well.”

1 Comment | Metrics, NI 14, NI14, Systems thinking, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

NI14 – the latest!

May 21, 2009

The IDeA have published a four page NI14 update IDeA May 2009 on their Community of Practice web site on the one around National Indicator 14.

The reason for the publication is that the closing date for submission from councils was 30th April 2009 and 350 have apparently submitted. As they are kind enough to highlight the Audit Commission has advised that NI14 is a non-comparable indicator i.e. not a TARGET.

They also state that “The IDeA will continue to gather evidence of both improvements to customer experience and efficiency savings resulting from NI14 data being used as a lever for service improvement and capacity building.”

I’m also examining the use that’s being made of NI14 in my own survey, but also looking at other options.

Leave a Comment » | Metrics, NI 14, NI14, transformational change | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

Behind the Vanguard

January 22, 2009

Just when you were thinking that John Seddon had been quiet for a while, up pops a paper on the topic of NI14, what more can I or anyone say, just read it -

http://www.systemsthinking.co.uk/9-nihorse.asp

1 Comment | NI 14, NI14, Systems thinking | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

NI14 – update to the guidance

December 19, 2008

A useful post (bk-ni14-dec-2008) on the ESD-Toolkit forum, that some won’t have access to is a two page document from Bob Kamall of the Cabinet Office. It comes in response to issues raised at the Tower 8.5 event in London that I attended. It does provide a little clarity and may calm a few concerned individuals and authorities, giving them time to get their acts together and do it right.

An additional update is to my list of system suppliers for satisfaction and NI14 recording. Cmetrix advise me that their URL is actually www.cmetrix.co.uk. Version four is here: company-table-v4

Leave a Comment » | Metrics, NI 14, NI14, citizen, customer satisfaction, transformational change | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

NI14 back in the news?

December 3, 2008

A recent survey from supplier Rostrvm included the addendum that:

“Other problems identified by the contact centres include the ambiguity of what is required (19%), the necessity of training staff to comply (11%) and preparing the back office and service support systems to handle the extra data (10%). A further 8% would struggle due to a lack of resources and time constraints. Just 4% of the local authorities surveyed did not perceive any problems preventing them from meeting the target. “

I was actually surprised at the large numbers doing anything, although at the recent Tower NI14 event I was the only one who admitted their authority wasn’t being particularly active, I suspect I was the only one stupid enough to do so in front of the Audit Commission and Government Office!

The problem demonstrated by the survey is that in its true conception the indicator is not just for call centres and should cover all citizen contact be that face-to-face, email or web, so it needs to be dealt with as a CORPORATE issue! I wonder how many can truly say that?

 The fact that ‘avoidable contact’ or whatever is not just for call centres is proven by The ‘Half-yearly review and results summary’ of the Socitm/Govmetric Customer Access Improvement Service where on page 8 was the revelation that  not all channels are equal that whilst telephony was favoured for many there was an clear lead on the web for adult services and that in satisfaction terms the web was less satisfactory across all the services listed! This is a clear vote for Citizen Engagement Exchange to dig into the reasons why, especially when most of those using the telephone for all services were satisfied. I’m afraid the publication is for users and Socitm Insight subscribers so I can’t link to it here, but it just proves what those of us looking at the breadth of channels will have realised! It also showed just how great the web channel usage was compared with the others…despite lack of satisfaction.

Leave a Comment » | Metrics, NI14, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

Viewing the market

November 19, 2008

Having mentioned GovMetric and Mavis over recent months I felt it fair to list the other suppliers of systems specialising in NI14 and/or satisfaction, other than the pure customer relationship management (CRM) systems that have been adapted to record ‘avoidable contact’. If anybody knows any other systems, please let me know. I’m not saying that any are any good, and I know some are very expensive and some quite limited but one of these days I’ll prepare a comparison chart:

www.singularity.co.uk

www.opinion-8.com

www.rostrvm.com

www.govmetric.com

www.mavisnet.com

www.opalresponse.com

Another two added on the 20th November:

http://www.iizuka.co.uk/service-delivery-transformation.html

http://counciltracker.u-l.org.uk/home/index.php

A brief comparison table added  as a PDF 21 November 2008: company-table

2 Comments | Metrics, NI14, customer satisfaction | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

London calling! Revisiting NI14…

November 3, 2008

I travelled to an event today (3rd November 2008) hosted near the Tower of London all about National Indicator 14 for some further discussion of it. On the journey I was reviewing the literature about gaps and concluded that life was to short to cope with detailed gap analysis, so I’m hypothesising that citizen engagement feedback can be used to handle them, but hopefully that will all come out at the EiP conference in a week’s time!

Rather than a verbatim report, thought I’d pick up on the highlights or useful points that came out at the conference…

One of the introductions was by Sarah Fogden, reported to be inventor of NI14 and arch-nemesis of John Seddon, originator of the concept of demand failure, which Sarah highlighted by stating that she didn’t mind what the indicator was called but one was needed to satisfy the process-driven people at Whitehall, when I’d always thought they were target-driven and thought that all our problems would be solved if they were lead by process or system! She also tied the words ‘holistic’ and ‘transformation’ together – I wonder what Jan Smuts the South African statesman would think were he still around eighty years on? (Smuts’ definition – “The tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution”.

She did say to focus upon the key priorities of the organisation, use the CRM system to assist; that there is no right way to do it and that the overall figure for NI14 is meaningless…

Tom Wraith of the Audit Commission had little new to say but was still interesting when he stated that NI14 was:

  • the most frequently queried indicator
  • unlike most indicators
  • had far less prescription
  • moved on from BV157
  • a tool for self-improvement
  • AC won’t be directly comparing but they had a duty to make it public
  • what’s included is up to you!
  • The CLG edict that there was a need to ‘justify methodology’ was a little harsher than AC would have desired
  • It would be used as part of the conversation/dialogue with authorities about managing resources
  • Needed to be triangulated with the evidence

He was asked by Tony Hinkley who has been working for ESD-Toolkit on NI14 whether it was their intention to make it compulsory to use the Local Government Service List (LGSL) which I believe he confirmed?

Kate Batty from Tameside said that NI14 was not the whole answer but that ESD-Toolkit, Mosaic, customer journey mapping and customer service training were all part. Here words were that the order should be: people, process, then technology! One her snappy phrases was ‘lets stop worrying about measuring apples and pears and measure fruit’, which in NI14’s case was highly appropriate…

A fascinating presentation was made by Tom Benford upon the ‘call reduction strategy’ used at the DVLR. He stated that 60% of their customer wanted to use the ‘phone for service, despite frequently having got the number off the web site! In order to reduce avoidable contact and the number of telephone calls they’d looked at the end-to-end customer experience and the process times. As a result they’d made a number of changes:

  • revised the direct.gov content
  • put their the actual questions being asked on the web
  • made their URL’s friendly
  • put a link from the online directory enquiries to the web site
  • adopted plain English
  • redesigned customer-facing documents especially the highly used ones
  • cross-referenced material with online content
  • moved away from using form numbers
  • agreed customer-meaningful turnaround times for metrics
  • revised telephone book entries – put web site address first but also numbers which may not be their services but which the public think they do

One question revealed that despite not being NI14, the resultant transformation was possibly more effective than NI14

It was also stated that no local authority had included NI14 within their quota of targets for LAA…

NI14 had shifted to being outcome focused

Blackpool had realised that their ‘Customer First’ wasn’t working so they listened to customer demand for six weeks, wrote everything down and from this extracted 4000 demands, 121 of true value under seven  broad themes. With their turnover of residents they found change of address to be the most frequent demand and focused upon that initially. Their motto was “in a perfect world, how would we serve the customer?”

A lesson from Halton to their staff when training was: “to think of it from the customer’s view!”

I hope the Cabinet Office don’t mind me publicising the fact that the presentations should be available on their web site.

Leave a Comment » | NI14, Systems thinking, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

IDeA NI14 Guidance and GovMetric

August 2, 2008

Public Sector Forums have made a great deal of the fact that the IDeA guidance upon NI14 promoted GovMetric and only GovMetric as a possible solution.

I’ll declare some interests here, I have met wil rol the company that produce GovMetric and over a year ago had an academic discussion with them about the while concept of customer satisfaction and channel migration.The council I work for currently employs the Socitm solution for doing web site evaluation which partialy employs a tool produced by rol, who are working with Socitm to do service benchmarking. I am also a Socitm member, a member of my regional Socitm executive and also on the Local Government Chief Information Officer Council, which Socitm were recruited by central government to create.

I like the concept of GovMetric and haven’t seen anything other than built in CRM tools to match it and of course they don’t all come with the templates for web sites or a complete and designed-for-purpose suite of tools. There is Opinion-8, which I believe doesn’t work quite the same way either.

I’ll agree that it was daft for the IDeA to nominate one tool, I don’t think they could have avoided promoting the ESD-Toolkit, since its their child! However, I have yet to find anything conceptually up to GovMetric. We asked our web developers to build a tool into the web site CSS to collect feedback and they wanted a lot of money, it would probably have contributing to buying GovMetric, which isn’t cheap, and tying up the other channels!

What’s the solution? Horses for courses, I suspect, by the time people get around to trying to collect NI14 data manually they’ll realise what a time waster it is and plump for an electronic tool. What is needed in collecting the data is rigour and an awareness that NI14 is not the answer, the answer is feedback from staff and citizens about the systems we use, be they delivering answers by the web, telephone or face-to-face. We need to collect that feedback and act upon it but at the same time supply the required indicator.

Why do we need to do that? To instil confidence in the public that we mean to change, to transform. We do mean to do this, of course, but we need to demonstrate it! We also need to placate the Minister!

Leave a Comment » | Metrics, NI14, customer satisfaction, e-government | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

A month by month guide to whats been blogged!

July 31, 2008

December 2007

National Indicator 14 – avoidable contact - this was the first draft!

Measure for measure - a look at metrics internationally

World Wide Web Consortium - some new reports

January 2008

Satisfaction Canadian Style - a look at some of the excellent Canadian work

Satisfaction is high on the agenda - publications from the LGA, NCC and New Statesman

Irish Lessons - a report from Ireland

February 2008

NI14 – the drama continues - version 2 of the draft national standard!

March 2008

NI14 version 3 and a homage to Catalonia - NI14 version 3 and a report back from a Spanish-flavoured conference

Wanting what the customer wants - NWEGG report on citizen need

Public Value, Social Capital & other fun metrics - a trawl through the terminology!

Customer Unfocused - excellent Richter & Conford paper

Delivering Efficiency - a new DCLG report

April 2008

Is there a public service ethic? Some academic views

Great E-mancipator survey as PDF - for those who can’t Google!

Customer Need and Public Service - philosophy gets dragged in!

A Theory of Parsimonious E-government Management - the theory!

14th April 1865 - why and what the Great Emancipator

Annual Research Report - what it says on the label!

Feeding back - from the launch of the SURVEY

History repeating itself - my abstract for Ethicomp 2008 at Mantua, Italy

Satisfaction? responding to Pete - a dialogue develops

Re: Pete but not a repeat - a response to a comment

E-government bulletin - a piece published in the same communication

May 2008

Public value and satisfaction - Mark H Moore

Channel migration – response to another comment

Targets, metrics and dissatisfaction – what happens when citizens aren’t happy?

Initial feedback to Great E-mancipator survey - a summary!

Systems thinking, control charts and philosophy - more philosophy and history

A summary of some recent posts on the UK e-democracy network - what it says

June 2008

Why government IT fails - a link to an article

Change and channels - a comment from Glyn Evans

Satisfaction - another meeting

Customer insight – an online conference - with the Cabinet Office

Systems thinking, balanced scorecards and satisfaction - they can work together

Scorecards, systems, Canada and Australia - examining thinking

Customer What? – a debate with cabinet Office

Old Whine in New Bottles - picking up on PINpoint from the IPF

Feedback from Brendan - a blogger at the IPF

Yardsticking! – better than benchmarks

July 2008

Computer Weekly blog awards - I’m shortlisted!

NI14 Guidance released - from the IDeA

NI14 – the new moneypit for suppliers

Tail wagging dog - another go at NI14

Bread and circuses - customers versus citizens

Some of July’s literature findings

Customer first! - findings on NI14 from the north east

A month by month guide to what’s been blogged – THIS!

August 2008

IDeA NI14 Guidance and GovMetric

Channel usage and strategy - updating my thoughts!

Customer insight guidance - whats happening at the IDeA

Semantics, semiotics and sophistry - having been told once too many times ‘its all semantics.’

Citizen oriented architecture - A new name for the model!

Which community - which communities are you a member of in your neighbourhood?

Computer Weekly blog awards - the sad news…

Inclusive transformation - a report from EURIM sounds positive!

September 2008

Researching Local Government, Web 2.0 and Service-oriented architecture - the future (perhaps?)

Conference call! - presenting research in London

The Invisible Hand? - mashups or intelligent agents?

Further feedback to the invisible hand - some comments!

Between rocks and hard places - invisible hand versus data security

The Public Office - a new Whitehall novelty

Rock on Canada - reading Canadian e-government

So, what’s the vision? – employing experience

Measuring what matters! – Australia adopts the Canadian CMT

The ‘invisible hand’ writes on… - more thoughts on XML and its uses

October 2008

Social inclusion and digital exclusion - a European report on English e-government

Promises, pledges and satisfaction - debating some more options

A history lesson! – looking back to a forecast from 2000…

The Bandwagon Effect - consumerism’s effect on service delivery!

Some questions about anchoring expectations - how do we measure the gap?

I before E – systems thinking and digital inclusion

Who is doing what in local government - is the network joined up?

Another model, but flawed – the Chester model

What do we do about sharing data? – the Conservative manifesto…

November 2008

Scotland seeks satisfaction - citizen satisfaction, the Scot’s approach

London calling! Revisiting NI14 - a report from Tower 08.5

Getting to Gemba - resorting to systems thinking

Getting egged on! - Report from the EiP conference

Satisfaction counts! - a newly discovered software supplier (and in the UK).

California dreaming - an interesting paper from the USA

Viewing the market - a brief look at system suppliers

Sayonara satisfaction - a link to another blog’s visit to an amazing Japanese company

Going critical! – Heidegger meets the IDeA

Being insightful - a very brief review of the ‘insight’ report

December 2008

Citizen Engagement Exchange - a revision of the model

NI14 back in the news? – some recent research

Citizen or consumer – command & control? - David Marquand revisited

NI 14 Paying the piper - more stuff on NI14!

Activity based recharging - are we economic with the economics?

Gartner – right again! More on metrics and engagement.

News from the USA - the Federal Web Managers’ white paper

NI14 – update to the guidance - 2 page update from the CabO

Wise words from Oz - A new Australian e-government report

Why bother? - a look back at the research

January 2009

How NOT to use feedback! Why the Minister is wrong.

East or west, no-one answers! A report from China

Having second thoughts! In support of Goodhart’s Law

Honesty is the best policy! Statistics in the news

Au Revoir NPM - A paper by Michael Duggett

Co-production - a report from Compass

Co-production – part 2 - an article in the latest Public Money & Management

Behind the Vanguard - a new essay from Prof. John Seddon

What have I just been saying? a recent academic paper from Surrey

Accentuate the positive! the latest Accenture report

February 2009

Digital Britain - a new report from DCMS and BERR

The power of information - latest news from Steinberg, Vanguard, et al

A good moan - a new piece on mycustomer.com

S*d it! - a slave to the Internet

Happy birthday - an homage to Charles & Abraham

Get real Read! - Government IT gets it in the neck, again.

Oysters and pearls - creative dissatisfaction

World Wide Web Consortium - news from nowhere

A new job? – a vacancy at Whitehall

Making contact with NI14 - update on the research and an online debate

March 2009

I Googled ‘twitter’ and ‘e-government’ - and found enlightenment, well almost!

Why don’t you listen? Two newish publications.

Web 2, yoof and snouts in the trough - how not to do new media

Paper in the pipeline - new research paper on its way

A paradox we can’t work with? An interesting academic editorial

The many angles of multichannel service - looking at an option from MyCustomer.com

New thinking - reading Gerry McGovern’s latest newsletter

Triumph of the will - the model and some papers from ‘clicktools‘

Complaining culture - turning complaints into an artform

Get Carter - Ofcom versus Digital Britain

Andrea strikes again - EU blue sky thinking

Laddering Participation - forty years on

April 2009

Social s(t)igma - another idea on MyCustomer.com

What is e-government for? – Is is just a channel or are we wanting to engage?

Evidence base - latest Gerry McGovern blog

Get satisfaction - more on satisfaction and pledges

Good complaint handling - a ‘how to’ guide

Great Emancipator II - the second annual survey

publicexperience - had a bad one?

You can’t win! - MP slags off DVLA

A private sector experience - what we learnt on our holiday

Operational efficiency - what can we read into the Treasury report?

May 2009

What I’d expected - initial results from the survey

Need and satisfaction - news from Chorley

No place to be - the value of the Place survey?

How to complain - another personal experience

Off target - lots of moans about target regimes

Good Planning - what makes a good planning web site?

Guidance & metrics - still not a lot of deep thinking…

NI14 – the latest!  IDeA keep us posted

Complaining again - advice about complaints

Citizen-consumers - digging in the library

June 2009

Expenses anyone? – a role for e-government

Researchers in the dark - Parity in the press

More on Parity - the report in the flesh

What shall we do? – a view from the week’s events

How many visitors? – discussing web site stats

Digital self-exclusion - a new Ofcom report by Mori

Getting overfocused on the tools - wasting money?

Don’t count on empowerment - a report from the CLG

Watmore’s wisdom - last words from the former CIO

The Final Report - from Carter

July 2009

Return to Canada - after a trip to ECEG2009

The Tory Take - considering things after an election

Web 2.0 and benchmarking - more from Gartner

Channel accounting - can we have a cost per channel?

Contrasting opinions - Who is right about Post Offices?

Listening to the front line - a new report from the Cabinet Office

Metrified - GovMetric go public

Getting Techie - listening to Tim Berners-Lee

World Class - yet another Cabinet Office report…

New blogger on the street! John Suffolk joins the crowd

August 2009

Consuming ourselves - another McKinsey report starts some thinking

Service quality and efficiency - MP’s ask questions, again…

Citizenomics - comparing costs and productivity

Interim survey results - NI14 rather wasted on us

Measuring the email mountain - Considering the President’s inbox

Developing e-government - advice from India

Foresight - a new report on the US

 Optimization Techniques - how customers measure

 Analysis Paralysis - IBM’s latest idea

Electronic government costs - in N.Ireland

September 2009

Effect of central on local - Is this what the CLG wants to hear?

Mistaken conclusions - Demos barking up a wrong tree?

Follow the leader - new report from the Sunningdale Institute

Channel Strategy - news and views from the Cabinet Office

In these hard times - looking at the Tory alternative

E-government dependencies - To Web 2.0 or not

Another survey - this one from the Oxford Internet Institute

US government web sites - a up-to-the-minute study

Why we need to involve the “local” end users - not just “other” cultures

October 2009

Engaged in the USA - some ways to approach citizens

Blogging about other bloggers’ blogs - some lessons from history

E-governancing - why Accenture agree with this blogger!

Will e-government be different? – back to the academic literature on e-government

Minister for e-government - Angela’s back!

Digital conclusion - Martha’s report

Beatcounters - beancounters getting it wrong?

User-centred approaches to e-Government - latest from the OECD

Public service? – it’s a culture thing!

November 2009

Disinfecting the swamp - thinking about “open gov”

Foressing the future - the Q3 report from Foresee

Analogues of service - Kevin Carey in GC Magazine

Citizen Issues - asking them what they think of service?

Reasons to be cheerful - G2010 in the news

Jobcentre + A qualitative analysis of the the dole offices

E-Parliament - will it be virtually any better?

E-government back in the news! – Malmo in the news

Benchmarking the mire - Dissing Capgemini

Happiness – is it the same as satisfaction?

December 2009

Back to academy - Papers by Winner and Hirschman

Open strategy - leaking a leaked leak

Don’t get carried away - liberating the UK’s mapping data?

Frontline first - new website/report from the Cabinet Office

Governing IT -  a report from the Institute for Government

Looking east - a report from Booz

E-democracy – e-government: e-democracy or e-deliberation

NDL - the sixth NDL-Metascybe integration and CRM report

Co-production again - a new report from NESTA

Measuring Social Media - looking at a few methods

January 2010

Gov 2.0 again - a Christmas message from Andrea di Maio

The case is adjourned – Philip Virgo’s blog

Social media analytics - Avinash Kaushik’s thoughts on them

Going native - what to do with social media natives?

A new start - picking on Deloitte!

Improving service - Socitm’s turn to be picked on!

Benchmarking the nations - what’s the point?

Zettabytes – how Americans consume information

Going continental - Pan-European E-services

The final edition? – Government ICT Strategy

February 2010

Social Media News - it’s there on the news stands

Satisfaction levels out - the latest Foresee report

Social media as a channel - a report from Right Now

Accountability - a report from Localis

The engagement ethic - a report from the Innovation Unit

Passive democracy - The Hansard Society considers social media

New Horizons - when is e-government achieved?

Transparency – web site transparency equates to trust in government?

Low usage of e-services - a tale from Korea

Smarter public services - IBM advertises in New Statesman!

March 2010

Crossroads – where we’re at with e-democracy

Digital participation - following on from Digital Britain

Poor relations - broadband coverage in USA not dissimilar to UK

Community work - a report from PwC and the IPPR

Leave a Comment » | Metrics, NI 14, NI14, Systems thinking, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

Customer First!

July 29, 2008

The North East echoes my initial findings! A new report written by Aperia, who did the work with Chorley/NWEGG on citizen need, has been produced on behalf of the Customer First Network of the North East England local authority customer service managers under the auspices of the North East Improvement & Efficiency Programme. It examines NI14 and contact management, with some sound advice!

Amongst the quotations I savour are:

regarding NI14 – “our view is that this figure is, in fact, of little value (but the Minister wanted one!)” – page 10

Page 11 – “Additionally, there are indications that it is important for public sector contact centre staff to increase their ratio of time spent with the customer as a percentage of time worked. There is emerging thinking that demonstrates that private sector call centre staff spend something approaching 40% of their working time with the customer whereas public sector equivalents spend less than 20% of their time with the customer. To drive these improvements it will be critical for contact centres to be recording a recognised measure of productivity – and what is more a measure that will have to be accepted by employees as an indicator that they can directly affect.”

Page 11 – “Attempts to address uniformity of customer satisfaction indices have been tried and failed on many occasions.”

Page 12 – “Potential measures for quality include:-

Overall Satisfaction – percentage of surveyed customer respondents expressing overall satisfaction with the services received to determine the percentage of customers who are satisfied overall with services provided by the organisation

Engagement with the improvement process – percentage of customers (broken down by customer type) identifying ways to improve service delivery to determine the level of customer engagement with service improvement.”

Page 13 – “Corporate systems should be in place to help measure customer satisfaction – the key quality criteria for any customer focused organisation. These should be multi-channel and configured in accordance with the available common languages (controlled lists) that describe local government services.

Page 14 – “Measuring usage of public services across all primary channels for that service is critical.”

Page 15 – “There are no council’s (who responded) who have a fully holistic approach to managing access channels for local services. Customer Services as organisational units tend to be limited to telephone and face to face contact with little, if any, control over the web and white post channels or other lower volume channels. Corporate responsibility for face-to-face remains isolated to one-stop-shops, rather than more broadly applied to all face to face interaction.”

All-in all a useful document!

Leave a Comment » | Metrics, NI14, customer satisfaction, e-government, transformational change | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

« Previous Entries