Customer insight is very much ‘flavour of the month' within local government circles at present.
Consultants are currently making a lot of money by telling councils how they can use customer insight to improve services, and from selling sources of insight. It's not rocket science, but people seem hungry to learn more about it. I chair the Public Sector Customer Insight Forum, set up by the IDeA as part of the work of the Local Government Delivery Council.
We host a popular community of practice on the IDeA knowledge website (www.idea.gov.uk) for those of you who are interested in finding out more. The idea of the forum is to learn from what works elsewhere.
You might be wondering how your organisation can afford to gather and use customer insight during the current, challenging times, with resources being squeezed from every direction.
The practical guide to using customer insight will tell you how to do it – for free. The guide can be found on www.idea.gov.uk. In Chorley, we have used household data in a very practical way to help boost electoral registration in a ward with very low levels of registration.
We were pondering how to engage local residents and encourage them to register to vote. We had already tried advertising in the local newspaper, but to no avail.
We found out why when we analysed customer profiles from the ward. People just did not buy the local newspaper. Their preferred method of communication – as defined by the household profiles – was leaflets and posters.
We tried this, posted them through letterboxes, and went into schools to encourage children to apply pressure to their parents. It was a great success, and voter registration went up by 7%.
We also do ‘Weeks of action' in specific neighbourhoods. We select the area based on customer insight. Specific households are targeted for welfare rights advice and energy conservation grants.
We work closely with ward members to identify and clear up ‘grot spots', and undertake ‘joined-up' enforcement with the police, DVLA, DWP and Revenue and Customs.
Instead of being caught for just one offence, criminals could be arrested for not having a taxed or insured vehicle, using red diesel, benefit fraud, not having a TV licence or driving an unsafe taxi.
I would encourage all councils to think about expanding your use of customer insight.
We have now embedded it into our CRM system, so we even know what our customers are likely to die of.
Donna Hall is chief executive at Chorley BC
