It just gets better and better!!
The second phase of this project is due to finish at the end of March and the results are looking good.
References to customer segmentation and profiling are cropping up all over the place and the work esd-toolkit have been doing with Experian Ltd really does support Local Authorities in making strategic decisions and targeting resources to suit customers' needs.
Who is most likely to re-cycle or be struggling to pay Council tax? Who is most likely to need primary school places and meals on wheels? These are all questions that can be tackled using profiling techniques. Import licensed data on the profiles of people in your borough into esd-toolkit and cross-reference with service transactions, channels and costs. Then you can find out who is actually using your services and target hard to reach groups with messages they are most likely to be receptive to. You can even profile customers who live outside your own area if they are using your services.
Customer Insight, Customer Behaviour and Customer Satisfaction are increasingly more important to Local authorities. Customer segmentation gives that in-depth knowledge of the characteristics and needs of citizens in order to provide relevant, focused and cost-effective services. Phase II of the Customer Profiling Project has worked in collaboration with:
- Cabinet Office, Customer Insight, (Promoting Customer Satisfaction) - understanding customer need and improving the customer experience
- LGA and IDeA, Customer Satisfaction and the Customer Insight Protocol - why and how local authorities can use the Customer Insight Protocol and share findings to help improve the protocol
- GovMetric - supporting the project and building in some of the outputs into future releases.
What the reports show
A customised report is written for each participating LA in collaboration with the LA project team to address local priorities. The report gives a general introduction to the project, explains the concept of customer segmentation and how Experian Mosaic classifications are derived putting it all into context with local background information and suggests areas that might be of interest to focus on in the future.
LAs can not only see the profile types of their citizens and make comparisons with national and regional averages but also see the take up of services and channels across different profile, types.
Benchmarking
As more transactions are loaded into esd-toolkit the benchmarking capability becomes more valuable. The software developed for the project is freely available to esd-toolkit subscribers. Any subscribed authority with licensed profile data for its area can follow the instructions to upload their data to profile their customers against the standards hosted in esd-toolkit. There is now a "Pick 'n' Mix" tariff to support you if you need additional resource.
Ethnicity
Ethnicity raises a number of challenges for Local Authorities both in terms of delivery of services and effective communication. Phase II of the project is working on a tool for ethnic profiling of services which will hopefully be available early in the new financial year.
Richard Webber, Visiting Professor at University College London, in partnership with Experian, has developed a classification tool that enables organisations to better understand the cultural, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds of their citizens.
By taking a personal and family name and appending the most likely cultural, ethnic and linguistic type and group and a measure of the relative strength of association between the name and the type, the classification provides the most likely country of origin, cultural group and language.
What next?
There are opportunities to get involved with the ethnic profiling work and with future phases of customer profiling either with a "Pick n Mix" phase whereby LAs can choose from a menu of support services or via Phase III that will most likely be profiling citizens across boundaries with a PCT, Police or Fire Authority. Separate work is going on to support contextual benchmarking of the National Indicators and of local measures. Anyone wanting to get involved in any of this work should contact sheila.apicella@esd.org.uk.
Initiatives directly referencing Customer segmentation are:
T-gov and T-local-gov
http://www.cio.gov.uk/transformational_government/index.asp
Lyons Enquiry
http://www.lyonsinquiry.org.uk/
White paper ....some useful links
http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/6503
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/localgovernment/story/0,,1805905,00.html
Closer to People and Places
http://campaigns.lga.gov.uk/peopleandplaces/home/
CSR07/varney
http://www.lga.gov.uk/Documents/Agenda/lgaexecutive/150606/item1.pdf
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/20F/14/bud06_ch6_135.pdf
http://www.strategy.gov.uk/work_areas/public_service_reform/index.asp
Cabinet Office Charter Mark
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/chartermark/downloads/final_standard/final_standard.doc
Useful documents developed by the Cabinet Office relating to Customer Insight and Channel Strategies
These include:
- Service Design Principles: A pocket guide [PDF, 550KB]
- Customer Insight in Public Services' Primer [PDF, 381KB] [Word, 299KB]
- Establishing an Effective Customer Insight Capability in Public Sector Organisations [PDF, 365KB] [Word, 561KB]
- Multi-channel Transformation in the Public Sector [PDF, 451KB] [Word, 319KB]
- The Annexes to this document contain examples relevant to principles outlined in it. For size reasons, they are available for download in sections according to the stage to which they refer.
- Annexes Part 1: Annex 1 Stage 1 Examples [PDF, 793KB] [Word, 2.3MB]
- Annexes Part 2: Annex 1 Stage 2 Examples [PDF, 726KB] [Word, 2.5MB]
- Annexes Part 3: Annex 1 Stage 3 Examples & Annex 2 [PDF, 1.7MB] [Word, 2.5MB]
- Promoting Customer Satisfaction: Guidance on improving the customer experience in Public Services [PDF, 1.1MB]
- How to measure customer satisfaction: A tool to improve the experience of customers [PDF, 4MB]
Link for all:
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/public_service_reform/delivery_council/workplan.asp
CSR-07 Service Transformation Agreement
Three key messages:
- Better for Customer
- Better for Staff
- Better for Taxpayers.
Over 6 delivery mechanisms:
- Learning from citizens and businesses.
- Grouping services in ways that are meaningful to the customer.
- Rationalising services for efficiency and service improvement
- Making better use of the customer information the public sector already holds.
- Linking local and central government.
- Engaging front line staff
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/pbr_csr/report/pbr_csr07_repindex.cfm
Customer insight - protocol
http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/aio/37749
LGA: Customer insight - developing customer satisfaction measures for local government services
http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/aio/37789