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Customer Service Strategy updates

Our most recent updates are included on this page, including details about our progress and any changes or developments in the strategy.

You can read previous updates on the All Things Digital blog.

If you have any feedback, email the team at CustomerServiceProgramme@birmingham.gov.uk.

July 2023 update

It has been another busy couple of weeks on the Customer Service Programme. While we have had another round of Overview and Scrutiny Task and Finish Groups with the Executive Report tabled at the Co-ordinating Overview and Scrutiny Committee, our self-organising team has been focussed on the workstreams.

Here is a snapshot of their work since our last update.

Customer panel

Refresh activities progress as we seek feedback from our current panel on their experience over the past 12 months of engagement to see:

  • if their work on the panel has met their expectations
  • how we can improve going forward

With the support of our Birmingham City Observatory colleagues and the effective use of demographic data and insight for targeted activity planning, this will help inform the next iteration of the panel and make sure our customer panel reflects our diverse city.

Voice automation

The discovery report findings and recommendations on the deployment of a voice automation solution have been approved by the SRO and strategic sponsor, and a ‘go/no-go’ decision was requested from the corporate leadership team.

In the interim, planning for the immersion events has gone ahead, and on Wednesday 19 July, PwC will host events at their offices in Chamberlain Square for contact centre staff and key stakeholders. The 2-hour interactive sessions will provide real-time front and backstage scenarios of what life would be like if voice automation were to be deployed in Birmingham City Council (BCC).

Culture change

A proposed approach for phase 2 culture change activities has been submitted by People Services and subsequently reviewed by the team. The next step will be approval by the steering committee before the rollout can commence.

Child employment

We have completed the first round of user research by testing the first low fidelity prototype, which has been developed in conjunction with the content experts to test the chaperone application journey. The development of the prototype into a live solution will be completed in the coming weeks, with the next increment being the administrator functionality.

We continued desk research, focusing on:

  • research into chaperone applicant training to explore platforms currently used to deliver the training
  • understand the current offer based on previous research
  • becoming familiar with legislative requirements.

We held a Birmingham City Council show and tell where members of the delivery team provided an update on the work from the last couple of sprints. The session was well attended, with lots of questions from colleagues wishing to understand the approach better.

We thank Viki Sullivan (Head of Business Improvement and Support for Children and Families Directorate) for joining us and sharing her thoughts on how we have been working collaboratively with the child employment and business support teams to develop the chaperone licence user journey and prototype.

Content team

The team have been busy on the roadmap for phase 2 of the content improvement work. Our content designers have:

  • iterated the content criteria used to assess the pages in scope
  • completed a full review and inventory audit of revenues - identifying a total of 178 pages of content for improvement
    • Council Tax - 110 pages
    • business rates - 68 pages

Playbacks have been scheduled to feedback on the high-level findings and recommendations to the service leads. When ways of working and timelines are agreed, the team will work with service leads to prioritise the content of the greatest value - based on user needs and the data and evidence from the analytics.

In preparation for the content redesign (pair writing), the scope of the work has been estimated and t-shirt sized based on the information we have available.

Housing

The team have almost completed the content improvement work in scope for Housing, with a few clean up exercises outstanding; and some follow up work on the houses in multiple occupation (HMO) pages about changes in HMO status and rules around Council Tax.

Housing tenant satisfaction

Activities to date have enabled our service designers to:

  • create a problem visualisation of the current world (‘as-is’)
  • overlay the
    • pain points
    • user needs
    • data and information queries and gaps
    • feedback triggers
    • dead ends and opportunities identified
  • to inform the future state development of the new world (‘to-be’).

The content designers have focused on the first iterations of the increment for lettings, allocations and voids, and estates management, making sure of alignment with national standards from the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH). Some of the common RSH standards that cut across all areas of Housing include, we:

  • listen to our tenants
  • keep our tenants informed
  • treat our tenants fairly and with respect

We have worked with our subject matter experts (SMEs) to research the areas tenants should be surveyed about and liaised with the service to find out what kind of feedback would be useful for BCC.

Page last updated: 8 February 2024

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