Description

Introduction

Associated as it was with government targets for online services, 2005 was a landmark year that underlined the need for an ICT service that is credible in the eyes of those who use it. With this in mind, we have analysed trends that have developed since 1999 when the service was first set up as well as looking at several case studies of organisations in our active dataset that have performed well according to their users.

Trends from 1999 to 2005

The use of gap analysis provides an excellent means of highlighting priorities for improvement. Using this technique over a period of six years enables us to identify those issues that organisations find relatively straightforward to resolve, as well as those that prove to be much more difficult. The numbers of those achieving high levels of overall user satisfaction have increased over the six years; those that do are not likely to have done so at the first attempt.

Lessons of good customer service

We have selected ten case studies of the best performing councils during 2004 and 2005, the period covered by our active dataset of 82 organisations. We have identified the key messages derived from the experience of each of these examples so that others can relate them to their own experience.

Case studies of successful organisations

The case study highlighted in this report comes from Dudley MBC, the best performing council since 1999 that is a single tier (or county) council and only the second local authority in the UK to achieve a Charter Mark for its ICT service. The nine other case studies come from (in alphabetical order) Aylesbury Vale DC, Bury MBC, Gwynedd CC, North Warwickshire BC, Northwest Regional Development Agency, South Gloucestershire, South Ribble BC, Stirling and Tameside MBC.

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