Improving customer focus amidst challenging budgetary cuts

Customer service cannot take a back seat

The time for all public services to think differently and, most importantly, act differently, is well and truly upon us – carrying on doing what we do now, the same way that we are doing it now, is simply not an option.

Current pressures on public sector finances has only heightened the emphasis on delivering ‘more for less’. Budget cuts are looming and it’s hard not to be concerned about the serious challenges facing the local government services. This would certainly appear to be at odds with an increased expectation from members of the public for a better quality service delivery experience.

It is important to remember that these spending cuts are being made in response to the unprecedented level of borrowing by the government. We are not talking about efficiency savings; we are talking about budget cuts anywhere between 15 and 30 per cent over the next decade. It is inevitable that cuts on this level will result in a reduced workforce, but these cuts also come at a time when the expectation of public-service delivery is at an all-time high after successive government promises.

This places enormous pressure on leaders to make tough decisions about staff and capacity and places equal pressure on those staff delivering front line services. Functions will need to become increasingly lean, embrace change in the form of shared services, adopt a more commercial approach and work towards a greater allegiance with the private sector.

However, while all this may be necessary in the context of optimising the outcome of budgetary cuts and becoming more efficient, good customer service cannot be compromised or be forced to take a back seat amidst these other important initiatives. There is no doubt that more, possibly irreparable damage will be done to the reputation of local government services if current levels of customer service are not at worst maintained and at best improved during this undefined period of challenging budgetary cuts.

Helping services to understand how customer-centric they are

So what is the solution, or at least part of it? How can frontline services establish how well they are engaging with customers to understand their needs; designing and delivering services in line with expectations and managing the service interactions to improve the customer experience?

Over the last 6 months, Excellence in Business have developed a peer review framework which is aimed at helping local government services answer these questions and develop an action plan for driving customer-focused change within their organisation.

The framework has been designed to explore in depth those areas that are a priority for customers, with particular focus on:

• Understanding needs and expectations;
• Professionalism and staff attitude;
• Access to and timeliness of information;
• Service design and delivery.

There is also a focus on how ‘customer insight’ is developed; how well the service user’s ‘customer journey’ is understood, and how robust the measurement of service satisfaction is.

For more details on the individual criteria and sub criteria of the Customer Services Peer Review Framework please contact us.

The Review Process

The review is typically conducted by a team of four assessors and a team leader from Excellence in Business. The peers are drawn from services across the local authority other than the one being reviewed. The review is broken down into a number of stages namely:

• The service under review completes a ‘position statement’;
• The team holds a planning meeting and assessors prepare for the review;
• The team interviews a cross-section of service managers, staff and appropriate stakeholders;
• The team produces a draft report highlighting key strengths and areas for improvement;
• The team feedback their findings and recommendations;
• The service holds an improvement planning workshop to develop an action plan to drive customer-focused change.

The review is conducted in partnership with the service rather than there being a sense of external imposition. Assessors act as critical friends, rather than simply being critical and this all helps to make the review a success. The review also provides a valuable learning and development opportunity for individual assessors not just in what they observe in relation to good/poor customer service but also the skills used in carrying out the review are readily useable in their day jobs.

If maintaining and indeed improving customer service in a climate of raised expectations and public sector budget cuts is a challenge/priority for councils, we believe there are a large number of frontline services that would benefit from a Customer Service Peer Review.

For more information on our peer review, contact Richard Roddie on 01642 661940