Welcome to the Towards One Council Website, a one stop shop for all news relating to the transition to one council for Wiltshire.

Customer Focus, Access and Contact

Customer focus is at the heart of the transition process to one council. This means designing every part of our services (and organisation) to identify, understand and meet the needs and preferences (demands) of the customers of those services. The customer defines the purpose of the service.

Access to service means the whole service journey of awareness, contact and fulfilment:

  • awareness: I have a need and I know where to go for help;
  • contact: I have easily found a suitable solution;
  • fulfilment: my solution has been delivered and it worked.

The Customer Access to Services Strategy

The Customer Access Strategy sets out the “why” and the “what” – the business priorities and drivers, and the “what it will be like” at two points in time:

  • On 1 April 2009: achieving completely reliable access to service – fairly detailed and specific
  • By 2012: creating transformed access to service – overall approach and direction of travel

Consultation

  • More than 100 people were interviewed or involved in workshops – all levels, across county, many from outside local government
  • Customer Focus Board and senior mgmt meetings
  • Joint Implementation Team
  • Members: interviews and informal meetings, the members’ seminar, and the Joint Overview and Scrutiny Task Group twice.
  • Equality and diversity consultation (twice) including EIA (equality impact assessment).
  • Also examined good practice in other councils for lessons which we could apply.

The Plans for 1 April 2009

  • Face to face: main locations; consistent process; new city-centre location in Salisbury
  • Telephone contact: one main number and range of “Golden Numbers”; local rate call all across Wiltshire;
  • Web: new website – delivery channel so customers can get things done;
  • E-mail: to service inboxes, not named individuals; acknowledgement and audit trail; e-forms from website;
  • People will be able to access a combined set of current district and county council services through each channel from day one.

Some of the key elements include:

  • Customer focused culture – we have this to varying degrees in various services – our goal is to make it this consistent: all services, all roles at all levels, all the time
  • Fairness and equity in access and delivery for all our diverse customers and communities
  • Use of customer insight to set priorities and design services: who, what, and how
  • Design of services around the customer using customer demand data and systems thinking – meaningful transactions in customers’ terms; right skills, knowledge and authority; moving to themed services;
  • Developing service delivery with our communities, and building social capital
  • Moving to being more pro-active shapers of our system, addressing root causes and working particularly hard on prevention and collaboration.

These elements will be part of the programme from the beginning, in a smaller way to begin with and more fully after 1 April 2009 as we move more into full transformation of services by 2012.

You can view the full Customer Access to Services Strategy here.

Contact

John Rogers, Customer Focus Lead

01225 756191

07785 313298

johnrogers@wiltshire.gov.uk