Issue - meetings

ORDERED that Executive approve:

1.    The new Customer Strategy 2024-27.

2.    The commitment of the estimated customer programme budget of £1.975m for inclusion within the 2025/26 to 2028/29 capital programme and Flexible Use of Capital Receipts strategy that would be incorporated into the 2025/26 Budget and MTFP report to be considered by Council on 19 February 2025.

The Executive Member for Finance submitted a report for Executive consideration.

The purpose of the report was to consider the Customer Strategy that supported the Mayors vision, as set out in the Council Plan 2024-27 and was an integral part of the Council’s wider Target Operating Model.

A recent review highlighted that the Council significantly lagged behind a number of Local Authorities. The Strategy would shift the Council from the current ‘As Is’ position, advancing to a Majority Local Authority and progressing over time to a Mature Authority as detailed in the report.

In 2023/24 over 125,000 calls were made to the Council’s Customer Centre. There were over 4,700 in-person visits and the website attracted over 2.9 million visitors. This was only a small proportion of the Council’s interactions with customers. There were many more interactions that occurred directly with service departments and were managed outside of the Customer Centre telephony system; however, this data was limited.

Work was currently underway to explore the possibility of extending the existing telephony solution corporately to ensure all calls were managed through a single solution, where appropriate. This would further assist with the monitoring of call volumes, understanding the call purpose, identifying alternative channels, better call signposting and reducing unnecessary calls.

Further features could also be introduced within the telephony solution which would immediately support services such as automatic call distribution, call routing and interactive voice responses were amongst some of the potential improvements.

Executive welcomed the strategy and it was recognised the strategy highlighted the need to invest in frontline services in order to ensure customer experience was right first time.

OPTIONS

The strategy provided a clear vision of how the Council could provide and deliver improved customer service benefits whilst realising savings through the intended

approach.

If the strategy was not implemented e.g. do nothing or scaled back, the Council would not be able to implement the change necessary to transform customer services and may have only been able to achieve partial benefits and savings.

ORDERED that Executive approve:

1.    The new Customer Strategy 2024-27.

2.    The commitment of the estimated customer programme budget of £1.975m for inclusion within the 2025/26 to 2028/29 capital programme and Flexible Use of Capital Receipts strategy that would be incorporated into the 2025/26 Budget and MTFP report to be considered by Council on 19 February 2025.

REASONS

The Customer Strategy was one of six transformation programmes, it had an approved business case (programme delivery document) and sought Executive approval. It offered a brand-new approach which aimed to fundamentally review, redesign, and reshape all of the Council’s customer-facing and business process solutions that complemented the Neighbourhood Model.

The approach met the requirements of the Council’s transformation portfolio and

forecast expenditure as outlined and agreed in the Budget and Medium-Term Financial Plan (MTFP), the Transformation Report and the Transformation Governance Arrangements, as outlined in the Executive Summary of the report.

The strategy was a key decision that would incur expenditure/savings of over £250,000 and impacted all wards  ...  view the full minutes text for item 79