Every time a council signs a contract with a service provider - whether it's to manage parking, care for vulnerable people, or clean up our streets – that council is effectively making a pledge: ‘we believe this is the best deal for residents'.
A new contract for customer services is the very definition of that pledge.
While 85% of Westminster residents are satisfied with the services that we provide and 71% rate the council as offering good value, we are always striving to improve both our services and value for money.
Essentially, we're always trying to provide more for less – and we believe our new customer service contract with Agilisys will do just that. Over 3 years, it will cost £3.7 m... but save almost £12m... and give residents more choice in accessing council services.
To begin with, the new customer contact centre and back office customer service operation will offer round-the-clock multi-channel customer services - including phone, webchat, and social media.
Operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it will provide information and advice across a wide range of council services including planning, registrars, electoral services, libraries, and waste. The contract also contains the commitment that 95% of calls will be answered within 60 seconds.
However, in an age where so much of our lives is organised over the internet, we'll also be looking to our new website to provide a better way to do business. Like the tip of an iceberg, it's just the visible part of new web infrastructure that will enable residents to interact with Westminster City Council at a time and place of their choosing.
91% of Westminster residents have access to the internet and we believe our website will increasingly become the first port of call for anyone wanting to access a council service. In fact, it's predicted that over the next three years there will be a 40% ‘channel shift' – that's a 40 per cent increase in the number of online transactions that would otherwise have been handled via mail, face-to-face, phone-calls etc.
You only have to look at resident parking permits to see how popular online access can be – more than 90% of the permits are now obtained online.
However, our online appeal won't evolve unaided. After research found that at least 60% of our residents* use smart phones, the new website was designed to be user-friendly on any device. That means access to functions like ‘Report It' won't be determined by when and where you can get to a PC.
‘Convenience' is the watchword here; on the Westminster home page, you'll find six boxes offering shortcuts to the most popular web functions. If trends of use change, so too will the functions in the boxes.
So, as well as the best possible value for money, our ambition is to offer a more joined-up customer service than ever before. In short, it will help residents to help themselves at a time and in a place of their choice.
Julia Corkey is director of strategy and communications for Westminster City Council
