Simon Caulkin has a cheerful article in the Observer about how Swale Borough Council in Kent transformed a disaster in their Housing Benefits department into a triumph. All this as Simon Caulkin says, “…in the space of a few months, with no extra resources and never a CRM system, shared service or call centre in sight.”
Read the article to find out how they did it, but these were the principles that guided them:
“*Understand what customers want and only do work that improves their experience of the service
* Ensure work goes out 100 per cent perfect, taking whatever time is needed and drawing on all necessary resources
* Manage the customer through to the end of the process, keeping them informed of progress and the service levels they can expect
* Organise work so that it is as error-proof as possible
* In meeting demand, work on the principle of first in, first out; seek to improve the end-to-end flow of work through the system every day
* Use measures that tell staff how well they are achieving things that matter to customers, not official specifications.”