• New service will help councils deliver a better service to the customer and a better deal to the taxpayer
• Information generated though CAIS will help councils manage customer access through phone, web, and face-to-face channels and plan for reducing ‘avoidable contact’

Socitm Insight, provider of the local authority Website take-up service is to join forces with GovMetric, a service that measures customer satisfaction across a range of council access channels, to launch the Customer Access Improvement Service.

The new service will enable councils to measure and benchmark their performance on customer satisfaction and value for money across a range of different channels, principally web, phone and face to face. The service has three components that provide the greatest value when used together:

GovMetric is an automated method of capturing and reporting the quality of customer interactions with a local authority across web, phone and face to face channels.

The Website take-up service is a web exit survey that provides detailed information on the user experience of a council websites.

Channel value benchmarking will enable local authorities to identify the total cost of providing access via web, phone and face to face channels and to compare these with other, similar local authorities

Buying into any one of these components, the customer will also have access to:

• bi-annual reports featuring headline results from all the component services as well as articles on topics related to customer access, channel management, contact management and management of web, phone and face-to-face channels.
• bi-annual subscriber workshops featuring presentations and discussion around the results from each service, speakers on topics related to customer access and channel management and opportunities for networking with other service users.
• consultancy services to support customer access performance improvement planning and implementation

By signing up to the Customer Access Improvement Service, local authorities will be able to demonstrate their progress towards providing ‘A better service for citizens and businesses, a better deal for the taxpayer’ – as recommended by Sir David Varney. Sir David’s report of the same name has strongly influenced government policy on customer service as set out in the Service Transformation Agreement.

Data generated from the service will also:

• provide evidence for customer service best value reviews
• enable performance benchmarking and opportunities for improvement
• help identify potential to shift customers to the least expensive channel to serve and to reduce ‘avoidable contact’ with customers
• demonstrate return on investment in improving access to services
• draw attention to the danger of silos developing between phone, web, and face-to-face channels.

‘Local authorities are under increasing pressure to improve customer satisfaction while reducing the cost of providing services’ says Martin Greenwood, programme manager for Socitm Insight. ‘While this may appear to be an impossible task, our research shows there is much scope for councils to improve both the quality and efficiency of their customer enquiry handling.’

‘Councils do not have access to comparable information about customer satisfaction with services provided through their web, phone and face-to-face channels’  says Nic Streatfeild of GovMetric. ‘They also struggle to quantify the cost of providing services through different channels, or the efficiencies to be gained from encouraging migration to lower cost-to-serve channels.  The Customer Access Improvement Service will change all that.’

GovMetric and the Website take-up service are established services with between them more than 100 local authority subscribers.

Channel value benchmarking will be launched with a workshop on 12 June 2008.

The next Website take-up service workshop will be held on 24 June 2008 at the Barbican Centre in London.

The next GovMetric workshops are on 16 May (Birmingham) and 25 September (Oakham)

Further information

Vicky Sargent or Peter Coates, Socitm Press Office
Tel: 0845 094 5641 e-mail: vicky.sargent@socitm.gov.uk or peter.coates@socitm.gov.uk                 

Martin Greenwood, Programme Manager, Socitm Insight
Tel: 01926 498703 or 07967 383755  e-mail: martin.greenwood@socitm.gov.uk

Nic Streatfeild, Govmetric
Tel: 01572 756565  e-mail:  Nic.Streatfeild@rol.co.uk;