Introduction
The B&NES Customer Experience Framework is our blueprint for ensuring the BEST customer experience and is driven by our core organisational purpose - to improve people’s lives. It is also closely aligned with the B&NES shared BEST values (Bold, Empowered, Supportive, Transparent), the B&NES Digital Strategy, and the Government Digital Service (GDS) Standards.
Our BEST values: Bold, Empowered, Supportive, Transparent
The framework sets out our three guiding principles to ensure the BEST customer experience:
- to be customer focused
- to adopt a continuous improvement ethos
- make services easily available and digital where possible
Our customers are people who live or work in our community, visitors to the many shops, leisure, and cultural venues that we host, clients, service users, businesses, and partner organisations that we interact with, and when our teams receive services from one another they are customers too.
We've all had customer experiences that have not been great, being handed off to different people, only for the call to drop, having to contact lots of different departments to get our issue resolved, and sometimes not being able to contact anyone at all. That’s not the experience we want for B&NES customers.
People are often contacting us at really difficult times in their lives, or about stressful and worrying things. We want their interactions with us to be consistently positive, simple, and painless.
Delivering the BEST customer experience should be at the heart of all processes and decision making across our organisation.
Our Customer Experiences
Did you know that in every month:
- 124,000 telephone calls come into the organisation
- approximately 1.2 million emails are sent
- approximately 30,000 people visit one of our Information and Advice Services
This is Margaret
Margaret, one of our customers
Margaret called us after losing her husband. He had tackled all things waste and she didn’t know where to begin. We calmly spoke with her, ensuring that she knew we’d stay on the line until she was happy and confident. We agreed to send her a printed calendar, showing when to expect each type of collection and labels for her recycling containers, to help her identify the contents. We also arranged an assisted collection, as she expressed a concern in getting the bins to the end of her driveway. Margaret was extremely grateful after we’d taken all the worry away. She felt supported and cared for.
This is Jay
Jay, one of our customers
Jay called because he was struggling to get into his Homesearch account. He had been trying for days and was at his wits end with trying. We reset his login details and stayed on the line with him while he tried to log in, providing the reassurance that we were not going to end the call before his query was fully resolved. He was able to access his account and start bidding on properties, and was so relieved and thankful. He said it was a massive weight lifted and that he wanted to give us flowers!
This is Bernard
Bernard, one of our customers
Bernard visited the Midsomer Norton Library and Information Service, as he needed to set up a Direct Debit for his Council Tax. The first thing he saw when he entered were the computers and the ‘self-serve’ signs, which made him immediately anxious, as he wanted help from a person. We reassured him that we could do this for him and that it would only take a few minutes, but he didn’t want to stay. Before he left, we asked for his name and account number so we could source a paper form and post it out, and explained that if he needed any help in the future he was very welcome to pop back in. This helped Bernard to feel that he was being listened to and would be able to receive in-person support in the future, should he need it.
Our Customer Experience Principles
Customer focused
We will:
- provide customers with a consistent, helpful and positive experience, that is inclusive and not discriminatory, across all contact channels
- provide customers with a timely response and answer questions and requests fully and accurately
- endeavour to resolve queries at first contact
- signpost to an alternative provider or appropriate source of support, if we do not provide a service
- take ownership and provide information on the next steps and timescales
- be transparent about our services and what we can and cannot do
Continuous improvement
We will:
- continually review service performance to ensure we continue to be customer focused and identify what improvements need to be made, so we can act on them
- continuously improve our customer experience, making sure we have the capacity, resources and technical flexibility to iterate and improve our services frequently
Make services easily available and digital where possible
We will:
- make it more convenient for customers to access services, information and stay informed about our services 24/7, in line with the Digital Strategy
- promote self-service, but continue to provide alternatives for those who need/ prefer them
- automate processes and minimise manual intervention wherever possible, improving services and increasing cost-efficiency for the council
- minimise the need, wherever we can, for customers to duplicate information if accessing more than one council service
Why are these important?
Customer focused
Customers rightly expect it to be simple and straightforward to contact us, to get a timely response, be treated with respect and dignity, and receive full and accurate answers to their requests or questions and for any accessibility needs to be considered. We want anyone interacting with the council to feel they have had a positive experience and reassured that they have been listened to.
We also want to minimise the effort required by customers to request services and get information without having to repeatedly chase us. Although not all queries/requests can be solved at first point of contact, it's important to take ownership and provide customers with clarity around next steps and timescales. Managing our customers' expectations is easier if we are clear and transparent about what we can and cannot do, signposting to an alternative provider or appropriate source of support whenever possible.
We will use the following measures to determine success:
- improved customer satisfaction
- reduced formal complaints
- all services routinely review, analyse, and monitor performance measures
- internal quality assurance (for example, mystery shopping or performance objective setting for all staff) is normalised
This principle links to our BEST values in the following ways:
- Bold: Keeping up with developments in technology and culture to find new ways of providing services will maintain a customer focus, particularly as customer expectations will continue to evolve
- Empowered: Designing our services so colleagues are equipped with the skills to listen, learn, and fully understand customer needs. This will empower staff to remain customer focused in the delivery of our services
- Supportive: Working collaboratively within and across teams to solve problems, share information, and to deliver timely, accurate, and professional responses enables greater customer focus
- Transparent: Holding ourselves and others to account to ensure we are customer focused in our decision making processes and service design
Continuous improvement
We can always improve on how we deliver our services, so actively monitoring the experiences of customers and seeking feedback, will allow us to learn what works well and what doesn't. Finding new ways to prioritise the customer voice and routinely listening to their needs and experiences will be vital, as services continue to adapt and evolve.
Embracing a culture of continuous improvement requires us to encourage curiosity amongst our staff, to support them to challenge the status quo and to listen when they spot opportunities for efficiencies. Colleagues who are engaged with learning from feedback will share in this mindset and play an active part in redesigning services, with a willingness to test ideas and explore service delivery from the customer viewpoint.
In practice, this requires shifting organisational thinking and practices to one that embraces regular service enhancements and adaptations, with an ethos of "plan-do-review", thereby offering improved customer experiences across the whole council.
We will use the following measures to determine success:
- our organisation values contact with our customers
- customer and colleague feedback is gathered routinely
- reduced formal complaints
- staff are empowered to continuously improve their service from a Customer Experience perspective
This principle links to our BEST values in the following ways:
- Bold: Setting aspirational goals and being proactive in our approach to trying out new ideas integrates seamlessly with the continuous improvement approach, and the cycle of plan-do-review
- Empowered: Promoting a learning culture where best practice is identified, championed, and shared will support our organisation to continually improve
- Supportive: Working collegiately in an environment that fosters relationship building and collaboration between and across services will drive continuous improvement initiatives forward
- Transparent: Being honest and open about how we can continuously improve means we are demonstrating accountability, although to be effective this needs to be supported by taking ownership and action
Make services easily available and digital where possible
The majority of customers expect it to be easy to access our services online via any device and although most will prefer this approach, we recognise that some customers will need to or prefer to interact with us through alternative means. Additionally, provision of online services may not be suitable for some service areas and/or when dealing with complex enquires, particularly those of a sensitive or personal nature. For these reasons, we will continue to provide mediated support and/or other contact options for those who need them, whilst encouraging those who can to interact with us online.
Customers often need support, information, or action from more than one of our services. Wherever we can, we will manage this is in a way that avoids customers having to duplicate the same information, or give it to many different people. Automating our processes, particularly those which are simple and straightforward, will mean customers receive more timely responses and there is less risk of error. It also frees up our resources, so we'll have greater capacity to provide support where it is most needed.
We will use the following measures to determine success:
- an increase in the use of online forms and digital services
- our website and digital access channels are easy to use by our customers as they are co-designed with our customers
- an increase in data transfer to and between services
- reduced transaction time and complexity for customers
This principle links to our BEST values in the following ways:
- Bold: Transforming services through innovative digital solutions will ensure more of our customers and more of our services can interact this way
- Empowered: Empowering our staff to develop, adopt and use digital solutions will lead to more inclusive services and increase the number of customers who self-serve, resulting in many efficiencies
- Supportive: Making services easily available and digital where possible means being curious about our customer experience, so we can design services to care for all customers, colleagues, and the environment
- Transparent: Making it easier for customers to leave feedback digitally will help us to monitor standards and learn from our mistakes
To help us embed our Customer Experience Framework Principles, a set of 'Customer Contact Standards' have been agreed to give clear guidance for each of our customer contact channels.
These standards support our staff to deliver a more consistent and customer-focused experience, and should be adopted by all staff.
Customer Charter
We have also developed our 'Customer Charter', a customer facing document designed to help explain our expectations for how we propose to deliver the BEST customer experience, whilst also explaining how our customers can help us to achieve this.
Included within our 'Customer Charter' is the respect our colleagues statement, which clarifies our stance on unreasonable customer behaviour.
