Transforming the customer journey: transforming how customers connect to the council, and how the council connects to itself.
Summary
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Definition of Customer Journey The customer journey encompasses all ways residents connect, interact, and transact with the council, covering both simple and complex needs.
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Current Challenges Current customer journeys can be complicated, causing delays in simple transactions and confusion for more complex services.
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Need for Transformation Transforming the customer journey will help to provide timely services, reduce administrative burdens, and create a modern, efficient, and sustainable organization.
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Four Levels of Customer Support The council has identified four levels of customer support: pre-front door services, digital-first self-service, supported general enquiries, and specialist customer management.
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Role of Digital Delivery Unit (DDU) The DDU, in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers, is leading the digitization process to streamline customer connections and integrate council services.
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Digital Inclusion and Skills The Digital Inclusion and Skills team is providing training to help vulnerable customers access online services, making their interactions quicker and easier.
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Implementation Timeline Different teams are currently reviewing customer journeys, with significant progress already made in several areas. More services will be transformed by 2025.
What is the customer journey?
Put simply, the ‘customer journey’ is any way that our customers (the c.350,000 who live in Shropshire, our residents) connect, interact and transact with us.
Every customer has the right to contact us when they require our services. That is a defining principle of the council.
Customers contact us for numerous reasons. They may contact us for relatively simple transactions, such as updating their direct debits to pay their council tax, say, or to make a complaint or an FOI request.
Other customers may want to contact us for more complicated reasons: an older person may want a blue badge, but may also need more complex services; likewise, a family may require children’s services to help with cost of living, or to access social services.
As a council, teams and individuals, we obviously want to provide all of our residents with the right services at the right time.
What is the problem?
At the moment, those different customer journeys can be complicated. A customer who wants to update their direct debit details may find that this simple transaction takes a long time, when it should take minutes. A vulnerable older person may not know who (or how) to contact the council about their blue badge application; again, a simple transaction might take days or weeks when it could take minutes.
This can be frustrating for our customers – we exist to help them – and bad for the council, as those inefficiencies are expensive and take up staff time.
This is for a variety of reasons: because customers can contact us through several different channels, there is an (understandable) urge to use those channels that they are used to: for example, calling a phone number, or sending an email.
The problem is that customer requests via phone or email often do not go to where they need to: this means customers don’t get the right services at the right time; and means that a simple request may get seen by multiple staff. This is expensive and time consuming: bad for customers and bad for the council.
Similarly, customers are often unaware of the range of services that we offer that can improve their lives: if they don’t know what those services are, it is impossible to ask for them.
Why do we need to transform the customer journey?
So that our customers get the right services at the right time.
And so we reduce the admin burden on staff, liberating them to do more useful work, and reducing the strain on customer-facing teams. This will become more acute as we become a smaller organisation.
This will reduce spend, and help us to become a truly modern, efficient and sustainable organisation.
How are we transforming the customer journey?
We have identified and are working to transform four broad customer journeys, each offering different levels of support to our customers, depending upon their needs.
Level 0: Our pre-front door customer services
This is for customers who do not need to come directly to the council – our ‘front door’. Our community hubs have a key role to play. These are places where customers can meet trained council staff directly within their communities, giving them access to the information and support residents need to stay happy, healthy and connected in their own communities. Our community hubs will provide and important link to all the activities, groups, information and support offered by Shropshire Council and our partners in the voluntary and community sector, and health services. We will work together with a focus on early help and prevention. This will help to manage demand for services that need more specialist intervention.
Level 1: Digital-first self-service
We know most of our customers prefer to interact with us online and we are investing in making this as simple as it can be. Whether ordering a new waste bin or registering a birth, our residents will be able to get to the resolution they need quickly, easily, and when they need it, giving them more time to focus on what matters to them.
Level 2: Supported general enquiries
These interactions are important so we can respond when necessary and make sure the right help is given at the right time. Enquiries handled here will be varied but could include things such as an initial conversation about a health and care issue or an urgent housing enquiry for a vulnerable person.
Level 3: Specialist customer management
Level 3 is where our services provide more specialist customer management, when expert support is needed to help with more complex needs. This will be led by our Outreach and Engagement programme.
How are we transforming the digital-first customer journey?
Key to the transformation of the customer journey will be the process of digitisation, which is being led by the Digital Delivery Unit (DDU). The DDU is a programme led by Shropshire Council alongside transformation partner PricewaterhouseCoopers. The aim of the DDU is to work with any service area that customers regularly contact, from Freedom of Information requests to Adult’s and Children’s Services. The aim is to use new technology to streamline how customers connect with us – and to ensure our own tech is properly joined up, which will allow services to better ‘speak’ to one another.
This is a major technological and cultural shift: customers will soon contact us through voice automation using artificial intelligence, and use webforms. This will reduce the multiple points of customer entry, and save the council substantial time and money. (Think of this as how customers today do most of their banking online, whereas some years ago, they had to queue and wait at their local branch.)
Customers will be able to get the services they need much quicker than currently.
Digital Inclusion and Skills
Whilst most customers are already sufficiently digital savvy and will welcome the new process, we also recognise that some customers – especially our most vulnerable – have challenges accessing the internet. This is where the Digital Inclusion and Skills team come in. We are running training sessions across Shropshire to help customers use the internet: this means that their customer journey will be much quicker and easier, allowing them to carry out transactions with us with a few clicks of a mouse. This will save people time, and get them the services they need, when they need them. It will also help us reduce spend and reduce the admin burden on staff.
What are community hubs?
Shropshire’s community hubs are vibrant spaces at the heart of local communities, designed to enrich the lives of local people.
More than just buildings, community hubs bring together the community, health and voluntary sectors so residents can access services and activities to help them live their best lives.
There is a wide range of health and wellbeing activities and support services on offer in Shropshire's community hubs, including early help for families, domestic abuse support, help to stop smoking, information about housing and much more, for all ages.
Our community hubs will provide an important link to all the activities, groups, information and support, not just from Shropshire Council but also from our partners in the voluntary and community sector, and health services.
We will work together with a focus on early help and prevention for thriving communities that everybody in Shropshire feels a part of. This will help to manage demand for services that need more specialist intervention.
The main community and family hubs in Shropshire are Sunflower House in Shrewsbury, Highley Health and Wellbeing Centre, Raven House in Market Drayton, Oswestry Library, Bridgnorth Library and Ludlow Youth Centre.
Mini hubs are being developed all over Shropshire to complement the support on offer in the main hubs.
When is this happening?
Right now, different teams and services are reviewing their customers’ journeys. Considerable work has already been carried out by the DDU, especially within: Complaints; Freedom of Information requests; Housing; Licensing; Revenues and benefits; Waste; Adult Social Care. More services will be transformed in 2025. The other programmes are being developed.