Agenda item

(To receive a report from Andrew Hancy, Head of Business Support, which invites the Board to consider a report on the Customer Strategy which is due to be considered by the Leader of the Council on the 07 September 2021. The views of the Board will be reported to the Leader of the Council as part of his consideration of this item)

Consideration was given to the Head of Business Support to consider a report on the Customer Strategy, which was due to be considered by the Leader of the Council on the 7 September 2021.

The council's Customer Strategy had been developed with three core priorities:

• Customer Experience – putting our customers at the heart of what we do, and ensuring our employees are clear and fair when communicating with customers
• Voice of the Customer – ensuring a strong customer voice across the organisation, working with customers to improve the way that we do things
• Our Future Offer – Enabling the Council to be in the best possible place to determine the right operating model from 2024 onwards.

The vision of the strategy was outlined as follows: “We will deliver strong, joined up services that are designed to ensure we are able to meet our customer’s current and future needs”. The strategy and supporting action plan set out how services would be enhanced to provide easier access and improved end-to-end solutions. Members were referred to the Customer Strategy and the action plan, which were set out at appendix 1 and 2 to the Executive report.

Members considered the report and during the discussion the following points were noted:

·         The strategy would be an outward facing live document aimed at the Council's customers. The style of the strategy was supported as it was well laid out and easy to read. However, it was highlighted that the action plan was too corporate in the language used in some places. It was confirmed that the action plan would continue to be refined and developed as it was implemented.

·         The inclusion of the action plan with the strategy was supported, and it was recommended that for future strategies, the action plan should also be attached as it helped to explain how the strategy would be implemented. There was no definition of who the customer was included in the strategy as there were so many different groups of customers that the Council interacted with. The Voice of the Customer priority would ensure the Council was engaging more with different groups of customers to consider how the Council could provide its services, how the services would be used in future, and then look to refine the services to meet the customers' needs. It was recommended that the photographs included in the document were relooked at to ensure that they reflected the diverse nature of Lincolnshire's communities. It was confirmed that alternative photographs that were more representative of Lincolnshire's communities were being requested through the Communications team.

·         Digital connections need to be improved in some parts of Lincolnshire. In areas where there was a lack of digital connections, customers would only be able to access the Council's services by telephone.

• Support was given to the development of a chat facility on the Council's website which was currently being looked into.

RESOLVED:

1. That the Board support the recommendations to the Leader of the Council as set out in the report;

That a summary of the above comments be passed on to the Leader of the Council as part of his consideration of this item.