Digital and customer experience strategy

We will create an environment that enables residents, businesses, and partners to interact with the council and access information and services easily when they need them, 24/7 where possible, through the most appropriate channels.

This theme builds on the progress and success from our previous Customer Services Strategy for 2017-2020, which had a high focus on improving customer service and enabling our customers to transact with us digitally wherever possible. It also included many new initiatives such as a customer services modular training programme, development of a customer promise and extensive face to face support to help our residents utilise our online services.

These things along with the necessity to do things differently throughout COVID-19 have created the foundations for the next steps of our digital and customer experience journey. In a modern world, we believe that most who can, will opt to access self-service systems, at a time that suits them.

However, we will commit to ensuring that face-to-face is available in a timely manner, when help is needed to use self-service technology, or when issues of a sensitive or complex nature need more urgency and attention than a digital interaction.

The outcome aims for this workstream are as follows.

Customers:

• will have the best possible experience whatever channel they decide to use
• will find it easy to contact us when it is convenient for them and will get a response which resolves their issue, query or need right first time
• will find the service they receive digitally is good enough to confirm our belief that residents who are digitally literate do choose to contact us in this way all the time, where appropriate
• will be engaged in the development of services, involved in testing new and changing ways of contacting us and see their feedback acted upon
• will benefit from proactive action by our teams and our partners to increase digital skills, access to digital equipment and better digital connectivity around the borough
• will see that we have a better understanding of their needs and are able to personalise services, both through increased levels of engagement and better use of data
• will have confidence that we are an organisation that is committed to ensuring the best possible customer experience, having the staff support and culture to achieve this
• will see us taking a proactive approach to resolving issues in the borough which affect them, before they need to contact us
• will understand we protect our telephone and appointment services to enable focus for these to be given to our most vulnerable residents
• will find our information accessible and easy to understand

For partners:

• we will make contacting us and transactions as simple as possible for them
• we will work collaboratively to ensure we are delivering joined-up services where possible
• close collaborative working will allow us to share our data and access each other's open data more easily, to help us ensure we are using what we know about our customers to better meet their needs
• our partnership working will benefit from us having a clear strategy in place

Employees:

• will have the skills, data, and technology they need to deliver the best possible customer experience
• will be supported to turn ideas for improving the customer experience into action
• will feel supported to engage with their customers when developing a new service or way for residents to contact us

To do this we will:

• review and agree service response times for service requests and emails for all services to ensure consistent standards and that customers' expectations are set
• increase the number of services that can be purchased via our online payment platform
• review our customer access operating model, aiming to reduce unnecessary contact channels wherever possible, such as generic email addresses
• explore how technology can enhance our contact centre offering through the provision of Omni-Channel, service automation and artificial intelligence
• improve our knowledge of our customers by continuing to develop our 'single view of' technology
• continue with our Right First Time customers service training for our employees, adapting this to continuously meet the needs of our constantly changing digital climate
• develop additional mechanisms to involve and engage with our customers
• continue with our customer services quality framework across council services to ensure a consistent level of service is being provided across all teams
• utilise new methodology for designing customer solutions such as Human Learning systems, which will encourage us to work with people listening to them, understanding what matters to them, learning from them, and working together
• prioritise completion of our Data Strategy and utilise our data effectively
• continue to review feedback from our customer satisfaction surveys, customer complaints, elected member enquiries and compliments ensuring that appropriate learning mechanisms are in place
• continue to join up across the council to share information digitally such as Tell Us Once so that customers don't have to contact several departments
• continue to benchmark across local government and with the private sector to identify opportunities to improve further
• support our residents to access our services through their free entitlement to digital skills training
• continue to monitor high call volumes outside of the contact centre to identify online development opportunities to remove the need for customers to call, or, if not, move some transactions into the contact centre. This may help free up time in the back-office to focus on those tasks that often require a distinct set of skills
• work closely with colleagues in our communications team to make sure that our customers get the right messages, at the right time, using the multiple communications channels open to us. We will utilise feedback to improve the way we communicate and make better use of existing tools to market new opportunities as well as providing improved service updates that are targeted to individual's needs
• ensure our online information is accessible, up to date, accurate, easy to understand and designed with our customers in mind
• ensure we have the right metrics and processes through which customer satisfaction, demand and digital take up can be measured and evaluated
• ensure that appropriate digital employee feedback mechanisms are in place
• review our contact centre opening hours to ensure the most effective use of resource
• consider if additional transactions should be online only, to enable additional resource to focus on supporting our digitally excluded and vulnerable customers
• create a new business plan for our registration service to enhance the offering to our customers within our new premises, including live streaming of ceremonies
• continue to operate Language line and Sign video to support customers with language and hearing difficulties

Digital Customer – progress so far

So far:

• we have invested in a new 24/7 payment platform that enables people to make a secure payment at a time that is convenient to them
• as of July 2022, over 72% of residents pay their Council Tax via direct debit – we are looking to further increase the number of services through more webforms that are available online
• our online self-service platform My Account has over 45,000 people signed up to it with over 13,000 people managing their Council Tax accounts via their Thurrock My Account
• residents can use My Account to report environmental service requests such as fly-tipping – although it is recognised more needs to be done to build trust and faith that when this system is used – and are able to check the status of their case to see a tangible outcome that matches reasonable expectations and requests
• 95% of all bulky waste requests are now done online through My Account
• residents use My Account for services such as housing benefits and reporting missed bins
• approximately 900 employees have already attended our Customer Services Modular training programme
• our Customer Services Quality Framework, which was recognised by the Customer Contact Association as leading practice, has been completed in several departments already, highlighting areas for improvement and associated action plans
• a new customer service delivery model developed to ensure assistance is provided to our vulnerable residents, building on delivery model changes implemented during COVID-19.
• we have developed a single view of debt to enable specific support for vulnerable service users
• we have achieved global standard accreditation from the Customer Contact Association for our Customer Services Team
• we have supported thousands of customers to move from traditional contact methods such as face to face to utilise our digital channels
• libraries have supported digital inclusion with free PC usage, reduced printing rates, free electricity usage for their devices, staff and volunteers assisting and supporting people to get online
• over 16,000 residents have attended Wiser4IT sessions
• job seekers' training is offered, which includes training on how to use Zoom and Teams
• basic IT, iPad, tablet, and smartphone training is provided for internet searching, online safety, shopping, price comparison, social inclusion, keeping contact with family and friends, and so on
•  we have successfully bid for and won the Good Things Foundation National Databank, allowing us to examine each area of Thurrock in detail, its level of digital literacy and poverty levels to better direct our services – from this bid libraries have also secured a number of Gifting Virgin02 , Vodaphone and 3mobile SIM cards / data and text / call minutes that can be given out freely to residents who cannot afford broadband