Customer Contact Baseline Data Collection

The Mid Kent Services (MKS) partnership, which consists of Tunbridge Wells, Maidstone and Swale, have invested in a Digital platform that will be utilised across all three Councils. SDS were tasked with collecting and analyse the data necessary to measure the impact of the new platform.

Background

To measure the success of moving the customer service function from the existing business software systems to a Digital platform, it is critical to record the baseline data of the present in order to make relative comparisons once the new platform is implemented.

The data that needed to be obtained and analysed was the customer contact data and, more specifically, the channels by which this contact was made by the Citizen to the Councils.

SDS were tasked with retrieving the customer contact baseline data from each partner as previously there was no baseline data available. This was true for all customer contact across all service areas and channels for all of the MKS partners.

Once the data had been retrieved from each MKS partner, the SDS objective was to set a current and up-to-date baseline for customer contact across all service areas as well as all channels for the 2015/16 financial year.

The baseline data will allow the MKS partnership to measure the benefits and savings achieved through the introduction of a Digital Customer Service Platform over the coming years.

Data collected for the baseline and future measurements will be shared with other SDS partners, this will allow them to learn from the impact digital transformation has on the contact channels used by customers and the savings that can be achieved.

What we did

Engage with service representatives at each authority

To gather the necessary contact statistics for all service areas and contact channels, it was of paramount importance to engage with the relevant service representatives.

In addition to the data for all service areas, the key contact channels that were to be collected were as follows:

● Telephone
● Face-to-face
● E-mail
● Web form
● SMS text message
● Web chat
● Any other channel identified by the Service area deemed relevant

Collection of customer contact data

● To obtain a clear understanding of the levels of customer contact across all channels for each service area for all of the MKS partners
● This was completed for each individual partner and as a collective across the partnership.

Cost-to-serve analysis

● When the customer contact data had been obtained, a cost-to-serve analysis could be carried out for each channel calculated and for each service area.
● This was completed for each individual partner and as a collective across the partnership.

The SDS Team were then able to provide two reports following the conclusion of the data collections.

The first was a high level overview reports looking at the individual totals for each individual MKS partner as well as a collective total. The report also included an individual and collective cost-to-serve across all partners and the partnership.

The second report was a comprehensive breakdown of the data gathered. This was broken down by each individual MKS partner.

The future

The analysis carried out by the SDS Team will be vital for the MKS partnership to measure future Citizen contact. The analysis can also be to the benefit of our partners, too. SDS are happy to share the learnings with other SDS partners to give a figure by which partners can compare existing customer contact figures and cost-to-serve.

Having completed the baseline data collection and presented back to the MKS partners the findings, all within the partnership are happy to use the content within the reports to monitor the impact of the new Digital platform over the coming years.

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