1. Customer Contact in the Public Sector
Developing Telephone Contact

2. Areas A bit of context Update on our Service Transformation strategy
Citizen and Business Contact Council
The Workplan
Our new Blueprint
What next

3. A bit of context...Use of the Internet in the UK today
73% have accessed the Internet (ONS)
67% of adults accessed Internet every day or almost every day (ONS)
61% of households have Internet access (ONS)
Elderly least likely to have accessed Internet, but use growing fast (ONS)
Favourite past-times for pensioners!
Internet usage: 41%
DIY / Gardening: 39% (AXA – Retirement Scope Survey, sample 1,500)‏

4. What are people doing online?
Information exchange predominates
Top four activities:
Finding information about goods and services 86%
85%
Travel and accommodation 63%
Obtaining information from public authorities websites 46% (ONS)‏

5. Mobile – 1997 businessmen
14% of the population had a mobile (MORI)‏

6. Mobile 2007 – pervasive, even amongst children
More mobiles than people
69million connections (OFCOM)‏
1billion texts a week...that's 4,000 a second (MDA)‏
73% of the lowest income groups own a mobile phone

7. Impact on service delivery – EU comparison
% of municipalities/local authorities that provide interactive services via: (Understand Project 2006)‏

8. Contact Centres - Why the need for change?
> 400M calls
> 60,000 staff
> 700 contact centres
> 70,000 phone numbers
> Local/Central Government 56:44 split

9. The landscape is changing still...
Over 70% of citizens use the phone to call public services – the highest percentage in Europe
Out of 36m calls made to 999, only 8m were classified as emergencies
The phone is more popular than face-to-face, or post to access UK public services
New York has only one (311) – things can change
A quarter to a third of Cardiff residents called 101 in the last 16 months
Public sector contact centres consistently win industry prizes for leadership,

10. Service Transformation – so what are we doing?
Sir David's Varney Review into Service Transformation
PSAs and Comprehensive Spending Review
The Delivery Council
Customer Insight
Promoting optimisation of delivery channel
Contact Council
Customer Group Directors
Benchmarking and standards

11. The Contact Council Oversight of customer contact across public sector
Objectives:
Make the Contact Function a leading profession in public sector
Unleash potential of the Function to deliver service transformation
Play a key role in delivering organisational CSR objectives
The Council's primary focus for now is telephone contact

12. The Contact Council – cross cutting membership
Cabinet Office
(Chair)‏
BERR
HMRC
NHS Direct
MoJ
Home Office
Police
DWP
DIUS
DVLA
Surrey County Council
Devon County Council
Local Govt
Wales
Birmingham City Council
Northumbria 101

13. Currently targeting...
Accreditation – requiring all publicly funded contact centres to undergo formal industry-recognised accreditation by Dec 08.
Blueprint – practice sharing across government.
Performance Innovation – One framework of performance measures being implemented across public sector contact centres. Quarterly reporting.
Helpline Strategy – 1,500 helplines in UK. Silo’ed infrastructure fragments services and inhibits matching demand and supply.
Single Access Numbers – reviewing options to use one memorable phone number for access to all non-emergency services e.g. 115.

14. The Blueprint
In response to recommendation 24 of the Varney report, ‘that the Contact Council be tasked with approving a blueprint for public sector contact centres’ the Contact Council has published a compilation of the best examples of specific aspects of public sector contact centre operations taken from across government

15. What now? Copying = Improvement! Don’t innovate – use someone else's!
Focus on tackling Avoidable Contact to create more capacity in the contact centres.
Learning from Europe and beyond – we want to know where we can learn.

16. Thank you! Transformational Government Cabinet Office Admiralty Arch
The Mall
SW1A 2WH