Customer Services Strategy
We deliver many different services from rubbish collection, to advice on dangerous structures. These can be general services, which impact on everybody, or more specialist services, which only affect a few people.
Our customers can be residents, businesses or visitors to the district and, while they can all have different requirements, everyone is likely to want their services delivered consistently, accurately and as quickly as possible.
We have to balance our legal requirements with local needs and, in an increasingly difficult financial environment, deliver those services as efficiently as possible.
Our customer services strategy sets out our corporate approach to customer services. Any future changes or projects that affect our customers will be aligned to the principles set out within it.
Read our customer services strategy.
Our action plan
Our action plan details how we will put our customer services strategy into practice. Find our what we are doing to improve our service to you.
Improve our webchat service
We aim to improve our webchat service by increasing the amount of services available. We will also increase the resources available in our Knowledge Bot for any chats which occur out of our normal working hours. Since implementing our Action Plan in November 2021, we have improved our webchat service by adding additional services such as the £150 Energy Rebate to both our live chat and knowledge bot. We have also worked hard with our service areas to promote webchat as a quicker and easier mode of customer support.
Improve integration with our website
We aim to improve integration between our services and our newly redesigned website to ensure that customers are always able to access resources easily and hassle free. Almost all of our services are now available via our website with dedicated e-forms, this enables our customers to self-serve their enquiries which is the quickest and easiest way of resolution.
Invest in additional training for all our staff
We aim to invest in additional training for all our staff to enable them to provide the highest level of customer service to the very best of their ability. All our staff are undertaking frequent training to ensure they maintain a high level of quality for their customers. This is to be reviewed annually with additional training scheduled when required.
Improve customer feedback options
We aim to improve the way our customers can provide feedback on our services. We will put this feedback to use when reviewing our practices and procedures to rectify areas that need improvement. Customers are currently able to provide feedback via our website, webchat and telephony services. We aim to increase these options and utilise this information to update our practices and procedures.
Adapt our systems to provide the quickest and most effective service to our customers
We aim to improve our systems to provide the quickest and most effective service to our customers. This includes modifying our current telephone system to streamline customer enquiries for a faster resolution. We have worked hard to improve our webchat system and telephony service. We have also implemented a dedicated appointment system which offers customers the opportunity to book a face to face appointment at our offices for certain services.
Streamline our services to enable most of our customer's bigger enquiries to be handled over the phone or via our website.
We aim to streamline many of our services to enable our customers to easily access and complete these from the comfort of their own home, without hassle. We have streamlined our services, where possible, to ensure that all customers are able to access them via our website, this continues to be the quickest and easiest way for customers to resolve all enquiries.