Welcome to the community space for all those with a special interest in customer insight.
What is customer insight?
“A deep ‘truth’ about the customer based on their behaviour, experiences, beliefs, needs or desires, that is the relevant to the task or issue and ‘rings bells’ with target people.”
Customer Insight in Public Services' Primer Oct 2006 [PDF, 381KB][Word, 299KB]
How can you obtain customer insight?
Many organisations use consultation or performance data to provide insight on their customers. However, real insight could be strengthened from a number of additional sources including predictive data (e.g. from commercial sources such as Mosaic and Acorn); systems; customer journey mapping (see Cabinet Office); complaints & other correspondence; front line staff; usability testing; mystery shopping exercises; informal contact; ethnography (i.e. mapping where people of different ethnic origins live); and identifying the costs of serving those needs.
The presentation of customer insight is as important as gathering the intelligence. Local authorities and their partners need to identify methods to present, use and share the outputs from this customer insight in a way that is useful to both local authority decision makers and those tasked with transforming services. These data have particular value when shared with, understood and used by partner organisations in providing a multi-agency approach to customer service.
This diagram shows how esd-toolkit considers the various contributory parts of customer insight and this briefing paper provides some context..
What is the Customer Insight Working Group?
The working group aims to add value to the evolving customer insight national agenda.
The main focus of the group is to work with the local government community to share experiences, develop good practice and build a business model to support the challenges of local authorities.
The group meets three times a year to oversee key developments, share initiatives, work through practical examples of good practice and identify improvement projects that support the development of this new citizen centric business model designed around customer need.
The forum provides all subscribers the opportunity to discuss projects, initiatives and share experiences.
Who should get involved?
The working group would benefit all registered toolkit users involved with improving:
How does it add value?
The working group aims to add value to the growing insight activity and not duplicate other networks. Input from the working group will come from local authority practitioners who understand local issues and can provide effective ideas for practical solutions. The esd-toolkit remains a local government owned and led programme that aims to support the working groups deliver and share improvements projects.