Agenda item

The Deputy Leader presented the progress update on recommendations from the Customer & Digital Peer Review and the key actions identified in the customer strategy.

The Council was committed to learning from best practice, both from across local government and other sectors. In May 2021, it invited the Local Government Association (LGA) to carry out a Customer Services and Digital Peer Challenge. A report on the findings and recommended actions was previously approved by Cabinet on the 8th July 2021, and this report provided an update on progress in delivering the agreed actions.

Customers were at the heart of everything the Council did and, to ensure that it delivered the best customer experience, the Council had introduced the ‘Everything Speaks’ approach.    The aims and priorities were set out in the Customer Strategy, and the report provided an update on how this was being embedded across the Council.  It highlighted examples of positive steps that had been taken to improve customer experience.  It had introduced “Ask Tom” a chatbot facility which had received positive feedback, replaced the “Everyday Telford App” with the “My Telford App” with improved and expanded functionality, the contact centre had achieved a 95% customer satisfaction score and the introduction of real time feedback in physical locations by the use of QR codes. Further developments were due to be delivered before March 2022

In order to build on the learning from the LGA Peer Challenge, this report also included a proposal that the Council became a member of the Institute of Customer Services (ICS) for a three year period in order to access a wide range of benefits and, in particular, this would enable the Council to benchmark its customer service performance against other organisations within the sector (and other sectors) on an ongoing basis.  It would enable the Council to work towards attaining the ICS Service Mark, an independently and rigorously assessed accreditation of commitment to, and achievement of, customer service standards to drive improvement which was synonymous with customer service excellence.

Members welcomed and noted the progress made to date and the satisfaction rates from residents who came to the Council for a number of reasons in times of need.  Every effort had been put in place to enable the public to gain access online and this helped to support Ward Members with their case work. 

The Leader of the Conservative Group welcomed the digital strategy but reminded Cabinet of the need to ensure other methods of access were available and asked that residents without access to digital services were encouraged to use facilities available in libraries and community centres.. 

In response the Deputy Leader expressed that he understood the digital divide and the Council was doing all it could to alleviate the issues.  There were many channels that residents could access and the current channels would not be changing as the Council had excellent statistics in relation to the Corporate Contact Centre.

RESOLVED – that Cabinet

a)    notes progress in delivering actions in the Customer Strategy and in responding to the feedback and recommendations from the Local Government Association Customer Services and Digital Peer Challenge; and

b)      approves the recommendation that the Council sign up to a three year “Discovery Roadmap” membership of the Institute of Customer Services, the benefits of which were set out the report.