London Borough of Bromley
Inspiring People worked with Bromley on a consultancy basis over an 8 year period designing, developing and rolling out the programme to over 80 teams across all Council Directorates. We helped them to focus on their own individual customer’s needs and expectations, building an action plan of improvement and measuring success. We supported the teams in analysing behaviours, processes and policies to bring them in line with government Best Value standards. The programme led to over 1,200 customer improvement actions being implemented.
Objectives
To design and deliver a programme of tools and techniques to enable teams to do the following
- To show visible improvement to the customer service offered within the team to all groups of customers – external and internal.
- To examine all partnership relationships and show visible improvement to joined up working.
- To examine and improve processes and show evidence of efficiency improvements without deterioration in customer care offered.
- To link into external measures and/or other frameworks and awards that the service is working towards.
- To present and share work and achievements to Senior Managers and other staff to encourage a customer service culture across the Council.
- To develop a habit of continuous improvement that will be retained once the assessment has taken place.
- To have considered the service from a point of view of accessibility and inclusion of a diverse range of customers even if “missing”.
What we did
- Designed, developed and rolled out the Bromley Customer Service Improvement Programme (CSIP) which later became Step-Up
- This started with a high profile presentation from the Chief Executive and each of the teams (usually 8 in each cohort) introducing themselves to each other
- Each team were then given five days consultancy time with Inspiring People over a 9 month period to establish where they were with customer service and to build and action a plan of tangible improvement involving the whole team as champions
- Time was spent reviewing the actions and offering specialist consultancy as the programme progressed and ultimately preparing the team for an internal assessment at the end of the period
- Assessment with a panel followed and finally each team presented back to each other and a group of high profile guests including Members at a competitive event
- Each Management/Team Leader group also took part in our Managing and Delivering Excellent Customer Service programme
Outcomes and successes
- The programme was hugely successful and ran from 2001 – 2008
- During that time over 80 teams went through CSIP and implemented approximately 1,200 customer improvements.
- The teams came from every directorate within the Authority
- CSIP was recognised by the Audit Commission as part of the reason for improvement in customer service within the Authority
- The programme was noticed by Gloucestershire County Council who recognised its benefits and we then worked with them to design and roll out the first year of their Customer First Improvement Programme in 2006
Feedback from the teams
“It helped us to take a step back and view our services more objectively from a customer’s viewpoint.”
“Taking part in the programme helped us to gain a better focus on our customers.”
“It helped to improve staff communication skills with customers, both written and verbal”
“Programme has been seen as a catalyst for change within the division. Used the programme to bring forward planned improvements that had been considered for some time.”
“Programme fed suggestions for change directly into our Best Value Review; more staff were involved and more improvements have been made.”
“….. has meant that how we deal with customers has become a focus for continuous improvement.”
“Strengthened team morale by: developing ways of working in unity; improving service provided by working in unity; attending as a team, team building activities.”
“Once we begun our “Action Plan” it seemed to grow. When we looked back over the six month period we were surprised at how much we had achieved.”