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6 January 2009
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A productive year

A productive year



Mark Bassham, CRM Programme Manager at the CRM Academy, reviews progress of the National Programme over the year.



The CRM National Programme has experienced a year of intense productivity. From a standing start last March, it has developed a portfolio of 41 support, advice and guidance documents aimed at supporting local authority decision makers in implementing CRM. These were rigorously tested by 83 local councils and 13 of them were released in draft form, four months ahead of schedule. This was in reaction to significant demand from councils wanting clarity on CRM in order for them to implement an appropriate solution and meet Whitehall targets to make all council services available electronically by 2005.

The CRM National Programme is tasked with the goal of bringing clarity and definition to the role of Customer Relationship Management in local government. It is one of 24 National Projects funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) to help councils deliver better services and meet joined-up e-Government targets by the end of 2005. This multi-million pound initiative enables citizens to access local government services through the Internet, by SMS, phone, face-to-face and through their TV, and local authorities to make the best and most cost effective use of their staffing and resources.

The initiative is led by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in partnership with the London Borough of Brent, London Borough of Newham, Salford City Council, Hull City Council and Knowsley Borough Council.

The CRM National Programme initially intended to release 26 products, but as the Programme worked with councils to identify and address their particular needs it realised that it would have to create 15 more. The 41 tools are designed to save local authorities time and money when it comes to improving customer care and services, but will also, when implemented by the council, make it easier for citizens to communicate with their council and allow each council to easily identify and deal with most service requests at the first point of contact.

So far, 52% of local authorities (202 out of 388) throughout England are currently involved with the CRM National Programme. This is seen as a great inroad but the CRM National Programme recognises that 2005 is approaching and that the remaining 186 councils need to address Whitehall`s ever-looming deadline, or risk their CPA and BVPI ratings.

Experience and research have shown that where councils use CRM, it has helped to significantly increase customer satisfaction levels. This is because staff have access to consistent and up-to-date information when dealing with customer enquiries. And because councils have the information they need to provide more responsive services, through a wider variety of channels such as call centres and the Internet.

North Somerset Council is one of the 202 councils using CRM to enhance its work and one of more than 80 councils originally involved in road testing the CRM National Programme products.

Commenting on the tools, Andy Moll, the council’s e-Government Strategy Manager, said: "North Somerset had already conducted an analysis into whether CRM could help us improve customer care and make our services more responsive, so what we needed help with was actually defining the user requirement and system specification as part of implementing the strategy”.

“The `tools` saved us months of development work by providing us with a list of factors we had to take into account. At the same time, by being able to evaluate the products, we were able to highlight deficiencies that only testing on the ground could identify.”

Knowsley has been at the forefront in developing and integrating CRM systems into their service delivery. It operates services from 169 locations and customers can access services in a variety of ways; through DigiTV, through a council cable TV channel, through one-stop shops, telephone and the web and help point kiosks. It was the first council in the country to provide the facility for residents to pay their council tax through their TVs.

The driving force behind this has been to look at how services can be delivered in a more effective way through integration enabling the council to operate as a single organisation providing a variety of services its customers want and need, rather than a host for individual services.

Customer services officers are able to identify an individual through their telephone number that will automatically link to an overview screen with customer details. This means that within 20 seconds, client staff can be helping customers with their queries. So for example, it can show which services they are using, track complaints and queries and identify demographic profiling issues in order to build up a picture of the customer and their likely service requirements from access to benefits to potential childcare needs.

Newham`s Customer Services Division and CRM system have been operational since 1998. This has enabled virtually all of the Council`s services to be delivered through its front office with extremely high levels of customer satisfaction and resolution of enquiries without reference to the back office.

The Customer Services division employs around 200 staff in the corporate call centre and the eight Customer Service Centres. In addition another 100 back office staff also use the system.

Newham`s Customer Services division supports more than 100 different languages. Partner agencies such as the Inland Revenue, Employment Agency and the voluntary sector also operate out of the Customer Service centres.

The Newham CRM system was written in-house using web technologies and has now come to market through a strategic partnership between Newham and Belfast Councils.

The Salford service profile currently includes environmental services, council tax, private sector benefits, housing benefits (public sector), registrars, job applications, Salford Triathlon, mobile libraries, housing repairs, rents, lettings, and all other customer related housing functions. In total, Salford currently handles almost 1 million calls a year.

Prior to integration within customer services/CRM, each service was `silo` based, and to understand or get to some information required complicated navigation through the IT maze. Staff dreaded being on the `phone (or counter) rota`. There were inconsistencies in the quality of service and the information provided to citizens, as this relied heavily on user experience. There was little management information available about customer demands, which made it difficult to plan resources, or properly track enquiries to ensure they were resolved.

The CRM solution is integrated with a range of back office systems to provide customer service representatives with all the information they need at the desktop in real-time. This enhances productivity and helps customer service representatives to deliver a
professional holistic, joined-up service to citizens. Customer satisfaction rates are in excess of 94 per cent; staff satisfaction rates are 97 per cent.

For councils that may need clarification on the direct impact of CRM on their citizens, their council's productivity and their CPA and BVPI ratings, the CRM National Programme's Academy website, www.crmacademy.org, provides a virtual one-stop-shop for independent advice, guidance and support; with a toolkit of 41 products for local authorities covering CRM strategies, solutions and organisational transformation and a help desk.

www.crmacademy.org