Agenda item

To consider the progress made in relation to the actions contained within the Customer Care Strategy Action Plan 2017/18 and to endorse the action plan for 2018/19.

99.1           The report of the Corporate Services Manager, circulated at Pages No. 64-74, provided an overview of the progress made in delivering the actions contained within the Customer Care Strategy 2017/18.  Members were asked to consider the progress made and to endorse the action plan for 2018/19.

99.2           The Corporate Services Manager advised that the Council Plan stressed the importance of putting customers first and, as a result, the Overview and Scrutiny Committee had undertaken a workshop in January 2016 to put in place a number of Customer Care Standards.  As Members would appreciate, customer service did not have a destination - it was ongoing and something which the Council was continually looking to improve.  The action plan held Officers accountable to a number of key actions for a specific year and the majority of actions within the 2017/18 plan had been completed with a small number of actions being moved forward to the 2018/19 plan.  There had been significant successes throughout the year in terms of the action to implement online forms which had seen huge uplift and improvement in online and self-service functions.

99.3           A Member noted that the target date for the action to review the Advice and Information Centre (AIC) buildings had been changed from July 2017 to March 2019 and he questioned why this had slipped so much.  The Head of Corporate Services advised that this was largely due to capacity within the team and the change in the Corporate Services Manager.  There were four AICs in the borough in Brockworth, Churchdown, Bishop’s Cleeve and Winchcombe and they had not been reviewed for a number of years.  It was important to ensure they were being used to their full potential and it had been intended to carry out a review during 2017/18; however, this would be a significant piece of work and his team had been tied up with other work, such as the garden waste project.  The Deputy Chief Executive felt that the AICs had potential to deliver a lot more to customers and the review would provide an opportunity to consider how their use could be maximised, as part of the options appraisal. He indicated that the Revenues and Benefits team had been looking at their working practices to see how they could get more people out to the AICs at certain times of day.  A Member felt that the AICs were extremely valuable and she would not welcome a proposal to close them.  The Head of Corporate Services felt that it was necessary to undertake some data analysis to establish who was currently using them and why.  The Corporate Services Manager would be going to visit Bishop’s Cleeve Library - which Tewkesbury Borough Council worked out of - to see if there could be more effective partnership working.  This data would be collated over the coming months and could potentially feed-in to a Scrutiny Review going forward.

99.4           The Member went on to query why the action to introduce a method of gathering service-level feedback from the website had also been delayed by a year and sought assurance that the deadline would not be pushed back further.  In response, the Corporate Services Manager confirmed that a number of other projects were coming to an end and she was confident that both this action, and the review of AICs, would come in on time.  She explained that it had been necessary to improve the self-service and online offering to be able to use this as an effective method; now that had been done, the team was a in a better position to take this action forward.   A Member questioned whether any progress had been made in relation to this action, for example, the commentary mentioned working with the Web Design Officer and operational managers and he queried if either of those tasks had been completed.  The Corporate Services Manager reiterated that the delay was two-fold: lack of resources and the need to ensure that the online service was sufficient to be able to collect feedback.  Initial discussions had taken place with the Web Design Officer and it was hoped that this element could be delivered before the target date.  The second part would be around ensuring that feedback was used effectively within the various Council departments.

99.5           In terms of the plan for 2018/19, Members were advised that there were a number of new actions.  The Corporate Services Manager explained that there were several Office 365 applications, such as Skype for business and webchat, which could provide additional value to customer services and support the Council’s digital vision.  The current Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system meant that work was done in a silo fashion which was not conducive to good customer service; a one-stop shop was something which the team was looking to progress.  Compliance with the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) was a key part of that; there were a number of requirements that needed something that the current system was unable to provide so changes were essential in that regard.   A Member raised concern that the status and progress to date columns had been omitted from the 2018/19 plan and, whilst he appreciated it was a new plan, he assumed that significant progress would already have been made against some of the actions.  The Head of Corporate Services explained that they had only been omitted because it was a new action plan and provided assurance they would be included when the next update was provided in six months’ time.

99.6           It was

RESOLVED          That the progress made in relation to the actions contained within the Customer Care Strategy Action Plan 2017/18 be NOTED and the Customer Care Strategy Action Plan 2018/19 be ENDORSED.