Meeting documents

1 THE ISSUE

1.1 Funding needs and other recommendations to successfully implement the Customer Access Programme, based on work with Planning Services and Customer Services.

2 RECOMMENDATION

2.1 The Financial Plan makes provision as outlined for the Customer Access Programme as outlined and that the list of recommendations is approved.

3 FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

3.1 The programme requires additional capital of £99K and additional revenue of £140K for 2006/07. Although projections have been made for future years these are based on current assumptions. Therefore it is recommended that a further report is made in September 2006 when the results of business process reengineering and service take up are known, so that funding requirements for 2007/08 are more accurate.

4 THE REPORT

4.1 A Members Working Group reported in December 2004, recommending that the Customer Access Programme achieve improved access to services and information via a 40 seat contact centre, interactive web site and three one stop shops. Work was to be done with Planning Service to help map out the schedule for this to be achieved. A report was to be brought back to the Executive in Autumn 2005 with the results of that work, looking at funding needs for 2006/07 as well as other areas such as HR and IT.

4.2 Work has been undertaken with the Planning Service as required, and it is anticipated that some of their functions will transfer to Customer Services in early 2006. New telephony has been installed for Action Line which will form the basis of the contact centre. Customer relationship management software has been purchased, and is currently being implemented for Action Line (the basis of the contact centre) and face to face staff. Training and development continues with all front line staff within the Service, and the feasibility of rationalising the number and type of reception points is underway. Two business process reengineering staff have been recruited, enabling process changes to be made ready for the contact centre implementation.

5 RISK MANAGEMENT

6 RATIONALE

6.1 The Customer Access Programme is corporate policy, and the work undertaken to date allows a phased introduction of the Programme. The experience of working with Planning indicates the cost, length of time and HR issues that will need to be taken into account for the programme to become successfully embedded.

7 OTHER OPTIONS CONSIDERED

7.1 It would be possible to slow down the programme so that a forty seat contact centre is reached later. However this would mean that the benefits of the investments already made in IT particularly would not be realised. In terms of other work on going across the Council such as Work Smart and culture change, we might lose the benefits of interdependencies if the programme was either implemented more slowly or more speedily.

8 CONSULTATION

8.1 The Corporate Issues Overview & Scrutiny Panel were verbally presented with this report and progress in September 2005. Heads of Service have been consulted on the schedule of service specifically, and ongoing with relation to the whole programme. Individual services have been consulted in relation to their service needs. Customer consultation has been carried out relating to the programme through a variety of methods e.g. focus groups, surveys, Voicebox.

9 REASONS FOR URGENCY

9.1 Not urgent.