The council’s inaugural CX strategy delivered significant uplift in service performance.

In January 2017 the council began its ‘Year of the Customer’. It introduced a Customer Charter, created a Customer Experience department, appointed a Customer Experience Manager and ran customer service training across the whole organisation.

The starting point, as the council’s own 2018-19 achievements report records it: an outdated telephony system with service disruptions, minimal reporting and performance metrics, a limited understanding of what a CRM could do for the council, and no direct KPI for customer experience. Closing the loop with customers on their requests for service was a new initiative in 2018-19.

Customer satisfaction: a process to measure customer satisfaction directly, the council’s first customer experience KPI. Five months of results by June 2019, with 90% of customers satisfied.

Customer journey mapping: piloted in 2018-19 with three departments, Finance, Volunteering and Planning, with a toolkit to follow so other departments could map their highest-volume requests.

Closing the loop: customers notified by email or SMS when their request was closed. 50 service types were included by June 2019, with 981 emails and 956 SMS sent between August 2018 and June 2019.

External audit: KPMG audited the council’s customer experience in 2018-19.

The customer data went into a monthly customer experience dashboard, individual KPIs for customer service staff, and a quality assessment tool. The KPMG audit findings, the council’s Metrics that Matter project and current customer satisfaction data were built into the 2019-20 plan.

In November 2019 the plan, the three-year roadmap and the 2018-19 results went to the council’s Infrastructure and Strategy Committee for strategic review. The plan set up quarterly Customer Insight Forums at department level, so each department would review its own satisfaction results and its own customer experience plan.

The organisation also adopted the long-term goal of a Single View of the Customer and built it into its IT application strategy.

First call resolution: a program in Development and Regulatory Services and Finance empowered staff to resolve requests at the first contact. The council reported first call resolution rising from 27% in January 2019 to 46% in June 2019.

Customer service hub: the administration centre was rebuilt as a customer service hub, with customer service and development services combined at one desk, a self-serve kiosk and digital visitor sign-in.

Systems: telephony upgraded to a stable system with reporting. Average handle time fell 20% and the call transfer rate fell 38%. The Single View of the Customer goal went into the IT application strategy, and the council invested more than $800,000 in IT upgrades over three years, including a Salesforce CRM.

Culture: customer experience built into the council’s leadership programs and orientation, and organisation-wide ‘positive first response’ training planned for 2019-20.

For customers: nearly half of contacts resolved first time, up from about a quarter, and an update when a request is closed.

For staff: the authority to resolve requests at first contact, clear individual KPIs, and fewer transfers.

For the council: a direct measure of customer experience for the first time, a monthly dashboard, a three-year roadmap taken to its committee for strategic review, and more than $800,000 of IT investment, including a Salesforce CRM.

For the sector: other councils have used the strategy as a baseline for their own customer experience work, according to Karen’s own records.

Karen led the program as Manager Customer Experience. The results were delivered by the council’s customer service team and the departments that took part.

The council moved from no direct customer measure to monthly customer data, put that data in front of its committee and its departments, and changed how calls were handled. In the six months the first call resolution program ran, the share of contacts resolved first time rose by 19 percentage points.