Channel shift

White Paper

A practical guide to what every local authority needs to know about achieving successful channel shift

Executive summary Local authorities need to make the move from more expensive methods of dealing with their citizens to less expensive ones. The financial climate demands it and the constantly evolving needs of their local populations also demand it. This paper examines how some local authorities are achieving effective channel shift in a way that benefits both their budgets and the citizen.

Introduction Channel shift is the process of moving customers from using more expensive means of contacting a council, such as the telephone and face-to-face contacts, to less expensive means, including self-service applications, email, text, voice recognition and finding out information or reporting issues via the web and social media.

The strategic importance of channel shift is now almost universally known across local public services, not just because it improves efficiency, but because it meets the expectations of many customers who are used to carrying out their day-to-day transactions in a way that is convenient to them.

For example, according to Socitm’s Better Connected 2012 report, around 20 per cent of visits to council websites fail to deliver a satisfactory result to the user. To illustrate the consequences of this, if we take a typical single tier council with 120,000 web visits per month it means that up to 24,000 of these visits are unsuccessful.

Due to the current financial climate we are also seeing an increased urgency for channel shift; – there is a need to shift channels now, rather than some time in the future. This is leading many authorities to examine what their next best step will be.

Some of these unresolved enquiries may be abandoned altogether, but up to 24,000 avoidable phone calls may result, as people ring up to do what they were unable to carry out on the website. Based on “cost per call” data, this results in a cost to the council of £68,000 a month (or £0.82m per year).

The reasons for change “35 per cent of all our transactions are now completely self-service, but we haven’t stopped providing any of our services through other channels. In fact our face-to-face service is better than before. We are not forcing our citizens to move – it is simply more convenient.

It also saves us money.”

Kit Wilson, customer services manager, Newport City Council

The Office for National Statistics estimates that as of 2012, 83.7 per cent of adults use the internet in the UK. In addition, Ofcom’s Communications Market report in August 2011, shows that over a quarter of adults (27%) and almost half of teenagers (47%) now own a smartphone.

However, many councils are still struggling to make effective use of online channels to offer self-service based transactions.

In fact, the figure may be higher, because Socitm research shows that an additional 20 per cent of web visits end in partial failure. This may generate similar levels of additional avoidable calls.

The figures speak for themselves, but it should not be assumed that effective channel shift is as straightforward as just moving services online and cutting staff costs. As Georgia Hawkes, head of business improvement at Maidstone Borough Council, explains, “Channel shift is not about moving transactions to cheaper channels; it is about migrating your customers to the right channels.”

“The greatest benefit of channel shift is that as people migrate to do more things online, they only need to contact us directly when something is complicated. This leaves our staff with more time to provide a better service to those customers who really need it.”

Simon Quilter, local taxation manager, Broadland District Council

So where do you start?

Step 1: Decide on your strategy A channel shift strategy: A plan which outlines the needs of the business and their customers. It defines your overall direction of travel, which services you plan to put online, what smartphone apps you wish to create and what goals you wish to achieve.

In order to know which are the most suitable channels for different council services and which will return the best efficiencies, a plan should be put into place, so it is agreed who is likely to use the new channels and how they want to use them.

• Do not try to think beyond three years with a strategy, as the situation is likely to change. For example, nobody could have predicted a few years ago how important Twitter would become in the way the public engages with organisations.

“We felt a strategy was important because it gives you focus and a plan.It also gives everyone a mandate of what you want to do.

Certain people may be resistant to channel shift but if you have an agreed strategy, it helps keep everyone on track.”

• Once a strategy is in place, make sure it is revisited at regular intervals and reviewed, so the latest developments can be taken into consideration.

Kit Wilson, customer services manager, Newport City Council

Having a plan in place is advisable even though technology and government directives are constantly evolving. A plan does not need to be a weighty tome as this could delay your ability to make savings from channel shift. Your plan may simply state which service you plan to shift first, why, and what outcomes you expect.

Whether it is a strategy for a single service shift or a more detailed document, a plan will help teams understand the general direction of travel and ensure you agree what savings you aim to achieve and service levels you wish to reach.

Strategy guidelines: • A strategy may be no more than a series of priorities of varying degrees of urgency, but is a worthwhile starting point to ensure all parties are agreed on the path to take.

“We never used to have an end vision, our attitude was let’s see where we get to,” says Georgia Hawkes at Maidstone Council, “Our channel shift strategy helped make things more focused and gave us several targets, including one to increase online transactions by 20 per cent of the total number of transactions. Now we are working to combine our channel shift strategy and customer service delivery model which means we will have an agreed end state and an agreed clear roadmap detailing how we get there.”

Any channel shift strategy should consider the following:

a) Which services should I shift?

When developing a digital strategy and understanding what to channel shift next, most councils start with the services they receive most requests for. So, if they get 10,000 calls a week on revenues and benefits, then this will be the first service to shift as it will deliver the most noticeable

benefits. It will also ensure any investment required in new technology is quickly clawed back.

“When we are looking for transactions or services to shift, we naturally looked for the big wins first,” says Georgia Hawkes from Maidstone Council. “You also have to consider the profile of the people using the service to see if they will be suitable for shifting. For us, telephone payments seemed the obvious choice and we have moved as many of these as possible to an automated line.”

b) Can I improve services as I shift?

Once it has been identified which service or services to shift, the opportunity to improve the service should also be investigated.

This can ensure old, irrelevant practices are not simply replicated post-shift.

“Speak to your stakeholders on each service to see how they can be improved,” says Kit Wilson, customer services manager from Newport City Council. “Do some customer insight work too and speak to those in the public and private sectors who are currently using best practice in this kind of shift in customer transaction. You will find there is a lot to be learned and you won’t be the first person trying to do it.”

Think about what aspects of your existing service are essential and what could be streamlined or dropped altogether within the shift. It may be that there are legacy pieces of information you request from

Tips for creating a strategy: • Identify your top 10 service requests by volume

• Talk to your customers and understand their requirements

• Understand what it costs to serve these requests via face-to-face contact, telephone and email, and prioritise those which have a high cost/high volume ratio

• Prioritise the services you want to shift and how and when you want to achieve this • Look at how others are handling similar projects and strategies

• Talk to your internal stakeholders to analyse how your service requests are currently being managed and whether they can be handled more effectively

citizens left over from previous government initiatives that you no longer require.

Ask ‘why do we do that?’ and sometimes the answer is simply ‘because we have always done it that way’ and not because it is completely necessary.

“People have to provide physical evidence of their address when they renew their parking permits which is usually a utility or Council Tax bill. We can check their Council Tax records on our own system so it seems daft to ask them to provide a bill that we sent them. If we send out a letter with a reference number, they could complete the process online and we simply send out a permit. It could save us staff time as a result.”

Ian Hirst, business delivery unit manager, Tunbridge Wells Borough Council

Also consider completely redesigning services from scratch with self-service at the centre and more traditional options as add-ons.

New technologies such as smartphones provide opportunities to streamline the process like never before. If you can take a picture of the problem then you don’t

need to ask for a text-based description.

If you can identify a fault location using GPS you do not need to ask for the address.

Gathering this newly available data can have positive effects to service delivery; a picture might negate the need for an initial inspection task, for example, and GPS will aid route-finding.

“For me channel shift is about designing services principally for online delivery and putting telephone and face-to-face access on the end,” says Ian Hirst from Tunbridge Wells Borough Council.

Step 2: Decide on the channels “If you look at who uses the services you will see where the opportunities are.

Look at the levels of transactions and their suitability for moving. Consider all types of channels including apps, SMS, automated phone lines and email, as well as online.” Georgia Hawkes, head of business improvement, Maidstone Borough Council The type of transaction and the profile of the citizen conducting it, will dictate to which channel it would be best suited.

prefer to do something online than to have to pick up the phone,” says Ian Hirst from Tunbridge Wells Borough Council.

As Ian Hirst, business delivery unit manager at Tunbridge Wells Borough Council says, “Not everything can be done online. Complex or emotive issues, like those relating to social services contacts, are not ideally handled online but can be handled well on the phone or face to face. Simple, time-sensitive information is perfect by text.”

When redesigning a council website for channel shift, it is important to think from a customer’s point of view. For example, citizens would expect to do all their business from one site, rather than being sent to different sites or asked for repeated logins for different transactions.

The key channels available are as follows:

1. Online When considering channel shift, the council’s website can be the focus of a great deal of self-service transactions.

The website lends itself perfectly to reporting issues (refuse, maintenance of properties), applications (parking permits, benefits, school places), for making secure payments (parking, Council Tax) and simply for finding out information (rubbish collections, library hours, children’s centres).

The website redesign is a chance to get rid of the silos that exist within the council.

In some councils you might go to one place to pay for your Council Tax but you couldn’t get a parking permit in the same place.

A website is an opportunity to offer a much more convenient customer experience with everything available in one place – a one stop shop for council services.

A well-designed council website can take a great deal of traffic away from the call centre team. What’s more, the general population want to use the web in this way.

“We started by identifying the top tasks people wanted to do on our website. Some are transactional, like planning applications and renewing parking permits and some are informational, like finding out bin collection information. We will ensure these services are available easily online,” says Ian Hirst from Tunbridge Wells Borough Council.

“This ensures people are less likely to contact the call centre to find what they need.”

“Our residents want to be able to access services when they visit our website. They are used to doing their shopping or car tax online and in a lot of cases they would

One common issue with council websites is that they have too many pages of information with little relevance to the user, such as news about what the council is up

to, when really all a citizen who visits the site wants is to get something done.

“We have 2,500 pages on our website and we discovered that people couldn’t find what they wanted. We are reducing the number of pages by 70 per cent,” says Ian Hirst. “We will ensure the most popular services can be now accessed from our home page so people do not have to go searching for them.”

What if…

When someone new moves to the area they were able to access a special page on the website where they could tell the council when they moved and where they had moved to. This would then allow them to get an accurate council tax bill, information on refuse collections, the location of their local recycling centre and the details of the council’s recycling policy, all with one visit.

2. Email The cost of paper, printer cartridges and manpower coupled with the fact that many people prefer using email to correspond than other methods, means that more and more councils are switching to electronic communications where possible.

E-billing is one of the most popular transactions. Broadland District Council has achieved significant savings through e-billing Council Tax bills. “It has cut the cost of postage and paper significantly,” says Simon Quilter, the local taxation manager at Broadland District Council. “Recently we purchased 8,500 email addresses from an agency and used them to push our e-billing and this has increased take-up by 25 per cent.

It also means we now have thousands of email addresses on accounts so it is easy to carry out further campaigns.”

3. SMS

In fact, many customers actually prefer email to other forms of communication: “We carried out some focus groups to find out how our citizens wanted to transact with the council and we found that people over the age of 65 said they liked to use email because they liked the audit trail created with this form of correspondence,” says Georgia Hawkes from Maidstone Council.

Texting is a perfect solution for small factual messages for customers. There is a small cost to consider but texting is often more effective than email as it arrives straight into the pocket or handbag of the person you are targeting.

This high customer expectation of email is something Simon Quilter from Broadland District Council has also noticed. “In our experience customers now have more confidence in sending an email to the council than they do in sending a letter so it is useful for content that they wish to be tracked,” he says.

What if…

A council allowed its residents to highlight their areas of interest on the council website, so instead of receiving numerous letters and newsletters on all council news, a resident who simply wanted information on education, planning and environmental matters, received a monthly email which summarised everything they needed to know on these topics. The resident is more likely to digest information that is relevant to them, and time and money is not wasted on unwanted communications.

“Customer profiling of our housing register applicants showed a large percentage have mobile phones. We used to receive a lot of phone queries from people who had lost their bid reference number when they wished to bid for a home. Now we text our customers their bid reference number and they can keep the text on their mobile phones for future reference. It has cut this type of enquiry by 60 per cent.”

Ian Hirst, Business Delivery Unit Manager, Tunbridge Wells Borough Council

School closure information, confirmation of appointments and even appointment reminders are good examples of where texting works well. These applications prevent calls from coming into the council or the cost of a missed home visit.

It can also serve as a great way of reminding people when their Council Tax bill is due for payment. “Recovery of missed payments costs us a lot. Most of the time people are not avoiding payment, they have simply forgotten it. If we send a letter telling them they have missed a payment that costs us £1. Often the customer will phone us back to explain and that can cost us around £5. We offered a text service to our customers who were regularly missing council tax payments.

It costs us nothing in comparison and now over 60 per cent of these recurrent late paying customers have not missed a single payment since – reducing our debt collection costs significantly,” says Ian Hirst from Tunbridge Wells Borough Council.

What if…

A young adult has recently moved in to council accommodation. The boiler needs repairing and a request is sent for these to take place. The engineer is booked. A text is sent the day before reminding the tenant who realises they have a job interview at that time. He reschedules for another day, preventing the cost of a missed appointment. Later that week, a reminder his rent is due in two days is also sent by text. The tenant returns with a text saying ‘pay rent’ back to the council and on the set day the relevant amount is automatically debited from his bank card.

4. Social networking Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are a great opportunity for councils to engage in an informal way with their citizens. For many people, their only memorable communication with their council comes in the form of a paper Council Tax bill, which is not necessarily a positive experience. Tweeting, posts and blogs are much easier ways to make contact with people and inform them of council news and services plus local information on road closures, flooding or changes to services.

Although councils need to be prepared for the fact that their citizens’ views and comments may not always be positive, social media will provide a valuable insight into how the local authority is perceived. It is also a great tool for polling opinion and reaching people who can be hard to reach and connect with in any other way.

What if…

A skate park in the borough is badly in need of attention but the budget is not available for all the repairs.

The council uses Twitter and Facebook to encourage local skaters and parents to get involved one weekend in clearing rubbish and bringing it up to scratch. Photos are posted online after the event, with thanks to those who took part.

5. Apps The use of apps is on the rise and councils can’t afford not to think about them.

There is a whole generation of people coming through who have not engaged with their council yet. They will be dealing with the public sector soon and the way they access the internet is key. Services should be built around smartphones as much as computers.

“I believe increasing the ways in which people in Newport can communicate and interact with the council will further strengthen our excellent customer service offering. Of course, a good smartphone app is now essential to achieve this, at the same time as improving efficiencies and driving down costs,” says Kit Wilson of Newport City Council.

Before making the decision to design an app, consider whether the services required could be achieved by making the council website more smartphone-friendly, or by making use of app solutions that already exist. This may prevent unnecessary investment.

“We have an app for waste and recycling where people can report things like fly tipping. We also have a tourism app as these services work well in this format,” says Georgia Hawes from Maidstone Council.

“We do believe there is a future in apps but we need to decide corporately the way to go forward. Do we continue ad hoc with lots

of different apps or do we have one council app where people can access a whole range of things?”

What if…

A council decides to create an app for residents to use when they need to arrange collection of a bulky item. The IT department creates a simple form using a cloud-based app creator. They link it to a payment service they use and the back office systems, so that the job is automatically paid for, logged and sent to a field worker’s device for action. The app took just a few hours to create and yet it has reduced council administration of a job significantly.

Step 3: Examine the technology Although technology is not often the starting point of your overall channel shift strategy, it is certainly a key consideration.

The ideal aim is that the technology allows a customer to achieve a task without intervention from anyone working at the council, ensuring you achieve the full benefits from successful channel shift.

This will require some level of integration between the data in your back office systems and the customer front end to ensure a completed online form, for example, is not simply printed off or emailed to a member staff only to be keyed into the back office systems manually.

The need to replace systems completely may not be necessary, as APIs can provide a suitable bridge between systems to ensure the right data flows in and out in the correct manner.

Deep data integration is the option to consider if you wish to keep your existing

back-office but ensure customers are able to do more than just apply online but actually get a decision online too.

Deep integration will mean the online or digital channel can interrogate the back office systems to carry out independent verification and deliver a result, such as an approval of an application or the payment of a bill.

Deep data integration, however, will not be necessary for lighter applications, including transactions such as booking an appointment or accessing information on services.

To achieve your aims, investment in new technology may be required. Some councils are partnering with other authorities to spread the cost. “We are in a partnership for IT services with two other councils and we have pooled our resources in order

to achieve back office integrations,” says Ian Hirst from Tunbridge Wells Borough Council. “As a result, we have been able to integrate with 30 per cent of our back office functions directly and this ensures we get the full benefits of channel shift. It is a good start and we can build on it.”

What if…

A council integrates GPS into its systems. So when a member of the public sends in a picture of an abandoned vehicle or graffiti from their mobile phone, council staff can see exactly where the problem is and get there quicker. This not only makes the process more efficient but brings down fuel costs as well.

Tips for getting the technology right: • Do not assume you need to rip out and replace what you already have • Share what is already in place; if the Council Tax team are already using a payment facility, can the technology be used for parking permits?

• Aim to minimise staff involvement in the processing of any request to ensure you exploit the full advantages of channel shift • When large new investments are required, consider joining up with other local authorities

Step 4: Get the reporting in place Reporting is critical to channel shift as there is no point continuing to invest in channels that are not taking the pressure off staff or saving money.

The management information that can be gleaned from online and other services offers valuable insight into what is working. It also uncovers trends in customer usage that can help you understand where your next big channel shift project should be targeted.

Once services have shifted to a new channel, reporting allows councils to see if they have been successful. For example, if the number of calls to the council has not dropped then something with the channel shift is wrong and needs addressing.

“We use a number of reporting methods. One of the most useful are the heat maps which give a visual display of where people are clicking on our website. What this revealed was that very few people were clicking on the banners or the news items that we had on our home page – only on the online services – which at the time were only a small part of the website space. This information made us rethink the design of the home page and the space allocated to services has increased as a result.”

Kit Wilson of Newport City Council.

Step 5: Get the people on board With any transformation project there are people issues to consider.

For channel shift there are two main aspects to this; getting the staff behind the project and getting citizens to use the new channels.

Staff Staff have to be brought along with a channel shift strategy right from the beginning. That way they can provide valuable insight into how services can be improved and the fear that ‘online’ means the ‘jobline’ for them can be minimised.

In fact, many councils are using channel shift to ensure they can maintain face-toface and telephone contact despite huge budget cuts.

“You cannot separate channel shift from your customer services team. The new channels should sit alongside telephone and face-to-face contact, they become part of the same central service offering,” says Ian Hirst from Tunbridge Wells. “Customer

services staff need to be responsible for everything otherwise they will worry that channel shift will mean the loss of staff and budget. With customer services in charge there is a real incentive for channel shift to take place as it will mean they can maintain or improve services for our residents.”

Customers Even the very best technical innovations can fail if nobody knows about them. Therefore, promotion to customers is absolutely essential for channel shift to succeed.

“Promoting the new channels has to be more than just a one-off campaign. It must go through every single piece of literature; it must be written on bin lorries and, there

need to be QR codes in the park. There are so many ways in which we need to promote our online channels,” says Ian Hirst from Tunbridge Wells Borough Council.

“When we wanted to encourage people to sign up for e-billing, we initially promoted it via our paper bills and envelopes and only received a moderate response. However, when we emailed our database and asked people to simply reply with the word ‘yes’ to switch to e-billing we had 4,500 people sign up. People are busy, so you have to make it easy for them,” says Simon Quilter from Broadland District Council.

Conclusion “Channel shift is not about moving things online, it is about looking at your communication with customers and seeing that you are doing it effectively.

The best channel shift would be no channels at all, where fewer of your customers need to get in touch as they are fully informed about what is going on.” Ian Hirst, Business Delivery Unit Manager, Tunbridge Wells Borough Council Few transformation projects offer the opportunities provided by channel shift. Done well, it not only provides significant savings but can also improve the customer experience making it more tailored and valuable.

The other advantage of channel shift is that it does not have to cost the earth.

“We have managed to achieve award-winning channel shift on a relative shoestring,” says Simon Quilter from Broadland District Council. “We know if we can do it for next to nothing we can just go ahead and do it without numerous levels of approvals, which helps speed up the process.”

The key to effective channel shift is to start with the customer and not the technology.

Look at services from the customers’ point of view to help get the strategy and design right. Council services have historically been designed from the council’s point of view so it does take some effort to turn the culture around. But this customer perspective helps answer the questions around which applications to shift on to what channels and what information will be required to service them.

Successful channel shift will enable you to communicate effectively with citizens in a two way dialogue. And although the starting point should be the customer, the savings that can be achieved help provide the incentive to overcoming any obstacles that may be in the way.

“We anticipate making cumulative savings of half a million pounds in the next five years from the self-service changes we have implemented.”

Kit Wilson, customer services manager, Newport City Council

How Capita can help Capita has worked with all the councils mentioned in this white paper, helping them achieve effective channel shift.

The Capita team of experts can also help you achieve a quality, cost-effective channel shift solution delivering your citizens a better service and saving your staff valuable time.

Wouldn’t it be great to work with one partner that has all the expertise you need?

To arrange a FREE consultation and to start exploring how Capita can help call us on

08701 631800

or visit the website at www.capita-software.co.uk/connect

Capita Manvers House Manvers Street Trowbridge BA14 8YX 08701 631800 connect@capita.co.uk www.capita-software.co.uk/connect