Government Business

With pioneering public sector case studies attracting attention at the national contact centre industry’s premier planning conference on 27-28 April, this is a big turnaround from the days when telephone handling was just a few phones in a local office.

How do we create a customer service operation that moves from answering calls to start championing the customer and offering end-to-end service? In the year ahead it will be those organisations and people that take a holistic view of the customer journey, breaking down silos and encouraging multi-partner projects, who will stand out from the crowd by achieving results in difficult times. 

Flexible resourcing
This is the reason why pioneering case studies from the public sector are attracting attention from industry experts in other sectors. Our independent research shows that public sector centres are significantly less developed in terms of flexible resourcing, with less than 20 per cent adopting short-notice or student schedules compared with over 40 per cent (short notice) and nearly 60 per cent (student working) in the private sectors. But in the area of contact avoidance, with national targets such as NI14 for local government, a very different picture emerges where almost every centre identifies bottlenecks in workflow, compared with only 60 per cent in the private sectors. Nearly 90 per cent of public service centres already record the reason or type of contact in some way. 
 
In the private sector it is still common to face major hurdles in working across departmental barriers, yet in local government, in particular, it is increasingly common-place to see initiatives that deliver, on a single citizen contact, a resolution to issues or information capture that brings together partners from across the spectrum of government provision. As John Tanner, head of customer services at Salford City Council, explains: “Our partner organisations are willing to talk to each other, break down barriers, do something different.” Cathy Eastwood, customer service manager at Canterbury City Council goes further: “It took a while to break down the silos, but now we’ve got good communication and get a lot of information to plan ahead.”

Diverse transformation programmes
It is a sign of the times that as many as four diverse public sector change programmes reached the closely fought shortlist for the Contact Centre Innovation Awards 2009, announced in January and to be presented at April’s contact centre planning conference. Projects from Thames Valley Police, London Borough of Haringey, Job Centre Plus and Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council were selected as finalists in the prestigious awards, alongside projects from leading private sector contact centres like QVC, Vodafone and British Gas. All have transformed the role of call centres, driving efficiency while also making them better places to work and contact.
 
Presented by the Professional Planning Forum, the winners are announced at Contact Centre Planning 2009, taking place in London 27-28 April, where the finalists will all be speaking about how they achieved such outstanding results. This conference is a great opportunity to learn from industry leaders and keep up-to-date with new developments. It brings together participants from all industry sectors to learn about best practice in delivering improvements in contact centre performance and customer experience across the front and back office. This year's conference is being held in the West London Novotel, with its outstanding conference facilities and accessible location. 
 
The published agenda includes a presentation from The Cabinet Office about industry-leading success in removing the causes of unnecessary contact in the public sector, alongside private sector presentations – such as on breaking down departmental silos at Cisco’s global customer support organisation and removing obstacles for customers at Norwich Union. 
 
Local government is well represented because of pioneering work in this sector. Surrey County Council and speakers from previous Innovation Award winners, Salford, Liverpool and Canterbury councils, will all share experience on the changing role of customer contact and how to avoid ‘failure demand’, by changing process in the back office service delivery functions. 

Removing obstructions
The conference theme – delivering the customer journey – gives a focus for discovering ways in which effective planning and information can help organisations remove the silos that get in the way of a great customer experience. Where does the journey begin that leads to a call or e-mail? What’s the end point? Do we take customers along the best route? How do we identify failure demand or avoidable contact? 
 
The April conference has an exceptional range of stirring keynote speakers, including sports psychologist Mike Finnegan, who has worked with high-profile sports people to uncover how self-belief drives performance and why it is the critical element to achieving success. Mike worked with members of the England cricket team, leading up to their exceptional ashes success in 2005, and two Premiership football clubs at a time of spectacular rise through the league tables. 
 
The conference includes workshops led by Planning Forum specialists in areas like getting people engaged with figures and reports and adapting measures of first time fix and contact avoidance to avoid implementing them in the wrong way. Paul Rice, head of service at Sandwell Council a former award finalist, elaborates: “Analysis of the information is as important as handling the call”. 

A unique blend 
A unique feature of this conference is the mix of private and public sector experience – allowing customer contact professionals to benchmark themselves against the best in all sectors. This event provides a specialist forum in which participants can share ideas on what works and what doesn’t – thus establishing a programme of best practice improvements that reflect practical experience and proven success from whatever quarter. 
 
A strong focus of all the Planning Forum’s events is on helping participants take away ideas that they can put into practice in their own workplace. Three out of four public sector finalists are members and participants in previous conferences. As Kath Hornsey from Stockton on Tees Borough Council explained after the 2008 conference: “I’ve taken lots of things back to put into action.” 

The Professional Planning Forum is the independent industry body for planning customer contact operations and is widely recognized for its best practice research and case studies, as well as the results-focused nature of its professional development training and in-company workshops. The Planning Forum runs the Contact Centre Innovation Awards and Contact Centre Planning conference, to be held in London on 27-28 April 2009.

Paul Smedley is executive director of the Professional Planning Forum and can be contacted on This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or 0333 123 5960.

For more information
Further information on the conference, research or case studies can be found at www.planningforum.co.uk or call 0333 123 59 60.