Channel shift Vicky Sargent, Director, Boilerhouse Media Presentation for Digital Futures 2012 boilerhouse.co.uk

What does she know? Boilerhouse Media Making a Difference with Data project Data visualisation and benchmarking tools for NHS Online communities: ourneighbourhoodplanning.org Local Open Data Demonstrator project (DCLG/Lambeth LB) Socitm Insight Better connected and Website take-up service teams Better served: customer access, efficiency and channel shift Local gov inputs to GDS Transactional Services explorer Methodology for benchmarking channel shift boilerhouse.co.uk

Today’s presentation: Six key steps to achieving channel shift 1. Establish a corporate channel shift programme 2. Collect and analyse channel data 3. Focus your website on top tasks 4. Embrace social media 5. Introduce citizen accounts 6. Improve citizen access ….and some final thoughts about shifting the local authority mindset to digital boilerhouse.co.uk

Why ‘channel shift’? boilerhouse.co.uk Digital channels save money: Source: Socitm Channel Value Benchmarking 2012 Socitm initial estimate of permanent savings by English local authorities £134m - £421m Tameside estimated £1m over four years from 2011 These are ‘front-end’ costs only Major additional savings are available from digitising back office processes Web 0.15 Phone 2.83 Face to face 8.62

1.Establish a corporate channel shift programme boilerhouse.co.uk Economies of scale lead to good savings where CS is applied across all services, but hard to make business case when done piecemeal Services can be resistant: needs leadership and direction from top Better served research showed few councils to be taking a corporate approach to channel shift

2. Collect and analyse channel data Could you draw a graph like this for your organisation? boilerhouse.co.uk How many offline enquiries does your organisation receive a year? A month? A day? How many per head of population? Which service generates the most offline enquiries? What’s the ratio of enquiries to transactions in different channels?

Socitm has been collecting data from councils for its CVB and WTS services. Also to assess feasibility of benchmarking channel shift We also collected data for GDS’s performance and productivity work Councils have spent time on ‘customer insight’ – but not on collecting and analysing their own customer data Enquires ph population vary widely boilerhouse.co.uk 2. Collect and analyse channel data

boilerhouse.co.uk Few councils confident they are capturing really good, comprehensive data Much simplified CRM or call logging enables comprehensive capture Centralised customer services a big advantage c.50% of incoming calls are not customer calls Lots of calls ‘leak’ into the back office evading data capture Surrey CC call logging system 2. Collect and analyse channel data

boilerhouse.co.uk Top ten services in English councils by volume of offline enquiries and as % of all enquiries 2. Collect and analyse channel data

3. Focus your website on top tasks boilerhouse.co.uk ………...people come to council websites to find a piece of information or complete a transaction. The website should be designed around this need. It should be easy and quick to do. From the organisation’s viewpoint, it needs to know what the most frequently used tasks are and design the site to respond……… Better connected 2012

3. Focus your website on top tasks boilerhouse.co.uk Focusing on top tasks is a good way to: Improve things for the greatest number of customers Meet customer needs not the needs of interest groups within the council Reduce the size of websites and and the quality problems of ‘too much information’ Bring down currently high levels of failure with web enquiries (on average 40%+ of enquires fail or partially fail Increase and maintain channel shift to the web !

4. Embrace social media Social media now an important tool when services are disrupted - plenty of evidence of a channel shift effect With engagement, social media can reach many more, more cheaply than traditional methods An important effect may be to connect non- frontline staff with customers boilerhouse.co.uk

5. Introduce citizen accounts boilerhouse.co.uk My page at

5. Introduce citizen accounts Newham (pop. 246,300) have 20,000+ registered (and active) users on My Newham, with 98% online purchases for parking permits Islington (pop. 182,600) have 68,496 registered users for My eAccount (as at 31/05/12) To reap the opportunity: Make the sign up process really, really easy (test, test, test..…) Make usability faultless (test, test, test..…) Identify killer applications (eg parking permits) Consider sign up incentives Think carefully about customer benefit and promote, promote, promote Collect and share the data boilerhouse.co.uk

6. Improve citizen access boilerhouse.co.uk Not spots exist and are significant inhibitor to channel shift Socitm has urged local authorities to take the initiative to address issue Local communities may use neighbourhood planning to solve problem (eg Eden Valley) NB Westminster and Kensington wifi initiative

6. Improve citizen access boilerhouse.co.uk Numbers who have never been online are reducing BUT There is a new digital divide between those who are always connected through many devices…….. ……..and those who for a range of reasons are not benefitting from what the web has to offer See this report and other research by the Oxford Internet Institute

And finally channel shift the mindset among colleagues, get them to seize the opportunity and embrace the fantastic things digital can deliver affordably Some of these tools are for customers Others are for managers/decision-makers boilerhouse.co.uk

Embrace all things digital: Present services for customers on maps boilerhouse.co.uk Add useful tools Use feeds from NHS Choices and other sources Add performance data Enable feedback from customers

Embrace all things digital: Present data for decision-making online boilerhouse.co.uk Provide easy-to use maps Combine own data with open data Make data easy to understand, manipulate and share Consider ‘crowd-sourcing’ data

Embrace all things digital: Make current performance data available online boilerhouse.co.uk Benchmark against peer group Enable online upload Support with resources and online forums

Embrace all things digital: Manage commissioning online boilerhouse.co.uk Display data on maps to provide key insights Include statistics and benchmarking Add forums and other information sharing tools

Thank You Vicky Sargent Director, Boilerhouse Media Presentation for Digital Futures 2012 boilerhouse.co.uk