Agenda item

Report of the Cabinet Member for Finance and Cost of Living.

Report of the Director of Customer Services.

This report sets out the Council’s ambitious agenda for change and improvement in how residents and other citizens can easily and effectively get the information, support and services they need, ensuring that no-one is left behind and our approach recognises individual strengths and needs.

As such the agenda for change is a cross-council objective and a new project started in late 2022 to fundamentally review the Council’s approach to citizen interaction.  This report provides an update on this project alongside providing data and insight into the experiences of the Customer Services and Registration Service, the Council’s highest volume ‘front door’.

Consideration was given to the report of the Director of Customer Services, who introduced the report. The Director of Customer Services and the Head of Customer and Registration Services gave the following responses to questions from the Committee:

Referring to the customer satisfaction rates from post-call, text message surveys, Members asked whether the opinions of residents who use landline telephones were being captured. The Head of Customer and Registration Services said that Camden had gained qualitative feedback from residents in that group through engagement with Age UK. The Head of Customer and Registration Services also explained that text message surveys was just one of the methods used for getting resident feedback and that email surveys were often used.

In response to a Member question around failure demand, the Head of Customer and Registration Services  explained that the highest rates were seen in areas where the majority of the process happened outside of the contact centre. Failure demand usually occurred when an issue needed to be sent to different teams for response.

Members were interested in the tests that were underway in some areas of the Camden website. The Director of Customer Services explained that the Council Tax section had beta pages that could be tested as part of a larger, longer-term project to update and rationalise information on the website. The beta pages went live a week ago and so there were not any statistics available to consider.

The Committee asked about any initial figures for savings that would happen because of the transformation of resident contact and the move to allow more functions to happen digitally. The Director of Customer Services said that she was cautious to predict figures of the savings before the transformation work was complete, taking out savings from a service before the completion of the work could result in a poorer service.

Speaking on the work Camden was doing to learn and understand more about citizen interaction, the Director of Customer Services explained the offer for Councillors to have one to one conversations with the design team for them to share insights into the resident journey within the Contact Centre. She agreed to circulate information on this offer to all Members.

Action by: the Director of Customer Services

A member of the committee asked about having cash payments as an option for residents receiving cost of living support as some may not be able to use a cashless method of payment. The Director of Customer services reassured members that Camden were committed to keeping post offices as route for residents to receive support. There were a range of ways to pay out the cost of living support including pay point, post offices and directly into bank accounts. Camden were also exploring a new provider that could send code to people that they could use at cash points to receive one-off cash payments.

Members asked about the conversations between Camden and voluntary care sector partners across the borough around citizen interaction with the council. The Director of Customer Services said that they had already engaged with Camden Advice Network as part of the process. Often partner organisations would refer residents on to the Council and act as one of the routes for residents to engage with Camden. From the engagement with community partners an increasing issue identified was around the complexity of need for certain residents. It was important to support residents and look to make complex case resolution work efficiently.

In response to a Member question about career development opportunities within the Contact Centre, the Director of Customer Services said that the Contact Centre was often used as an entry level route into the organisation. Working in the call centre was hard work but could be rewarding and could act as a great step in a career, with the right support.

A Member asked what groups the Council had engaged with as part of the citizen interaction work. The Director of Customer Services explained that Camden were seeking to ensure the experience of all groups with accessibility needs had been captured. Whether that be the deaf community, residents with learning difficulties and autism or those with other language needs.

RESOLVED –

THAT the report be noted.