The project issues
The Council was seeking to improve its weak CPA rating and was developing a new Vision and Improvement Plan to achieve this. It used funding provided by the IDeA Implementation Support Unit to pump-prime the delivery of the Improvement Plan which included components covering Leadership and Culture Change. Another major objective was to transform its customer services; this was the basis of Socitm Consulting’s assignment.

The project’s success criteria were:

• An agreed vision for Customer Services in Berwick
• Buy-in to the Vision across the Council
• A Customer Services Strategy for Berwick and a supporting business case
• A detailed action plan to deliver the strategy
• The resources required to deliver the Action Plan identified and approved
• A Governance structure in place to deliver the Action Plan

The Socitm Consulting solution
Socitm Consulting quickly helped the Council to develop a “what” vision for customer services and progressed from there to a high level “how to” vision which included:

• Crystallising the “what” vision and understanding its meaning for the organisation.
• Building a picture of citizen interactions with the Council including a description of what it will be like for citizens to use all of the channels and services provided
• Obtaining buy-in for the vision from all stakeholders
• Identifying what is needed to support this such as:
  • improved business processes
  • new organisation structures/governance
  • information and its management
  • enabling technology
  • joining up with other delivery partners
  • resources, funding, etc
  • Identifying the barriers to be overcome and how to do so (such as breaking down internal silos and overcoming organisational inertia)

This was followed by a number of “enabling” projects and later by a detailed roadmap and customer services strategy comprising a number of delivery projects.

Although the project contained several technical elements, it was primarily concerned with changing the organisation’s culture and behaviour regarding contacts with customers. In order to develop a meaningful strategy it was necessary to undertake a series of enabling projects such as:

• The creation of robust governance and project management arrangements with clear lines of political and management leadership
• A service-by-service review of processes used for managing customer contacts
• Customer satisfaction/preference surveys
• An assessment of the Council’s CRM, information management, and e-readiness arrangements
• A review of options for new/improved customer service points

The enabling work provided the capacity and a stable platform for the delivery projects that comprised the Customer Services strategy. These included several technical projects around CRM, DIP, workflow and the internet. Importantly they embraced process improvement and consideration of the staffing, skills, training, and organisational changes that were necessary for the programme as a whole to succeed.

As the enabling projects were completed and the delivery projects started, Socitm Consulting gradually withdrew from direct involvement in the Customer Services Transformation programme as the Council built up, and gained confidence in, its internal capacity to manage the programme.

The benefits to the client

• Buy-in at political and management levels
• A renewed sense of purpose, confidence and momentum
• More effective governance and project management arrangements
• Enduring process improvements
• An understanding that achieving lasting change is less to do with technology and more to do with effective processes, skills, and organisation focussed in a purposeful way on meeting customer needs and expectations

The client commented: “Customer Service is proceeding at a good pace and is embedded in all our Service Plans as the first priority of the Borough! You left us with a firm foundation upon which to build.”

Project identification
Client organisation: Berwick-upon-Tweed Borough Council
Client contact: Rob Marriner, Director, Environmental Services, 01289 330044, ram@berwick-upon-tweed.gov.uk 
Lead consultant: niall.perry@socitm.gov.uk
Project no: 5615