assisted bin collection project (PDF, 32 pages, 1.6MB large file)

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LGDC
Improvement
local government delivery council
Customer led transformation programme
Case study – Lancashire
Assisted Bin Collection project
20/58
Contents
About Lancashire
3
Background
4
Objectives
6
Approach
7
Research
7
Data matching
8
Socio-demographic profiling
9
Circle of need analysis
12
Interviewing
15
Implementation
17
Outbound calls
18
Referrals
19
Monitoring uptake
20
Findings
21
Outcomes
24
Financial Benefits
24
Positive Customer Feedback
26
Outputs
27
Governance and resourcing
28
Challenges and lessons learnt
29
Customers know what and how government should deliver service so ask them!
29
Migration of activities to different versions of the same IT package
30
Focus on delivery
30
Next steps
Project delivered in partnership by:
30
The Customer Led
Transformation Programme
Lancashire County Council’s work has
been funded under the Customer Led
Transformation programme. The fund
aims to embed the use of Customer
Insight and Social Media tools and
techniques as strategic management
capabilities across the public sector
family in order to support Place-Based
working.
The Customer Led Transformation
programme is overseen by the Local
Government Delivery Council (supported
by the Local Government Association).
The fund was established specifically to
support collaborative working between
local authorities and their partners
focused on using customer insight
and social media tools and techniques
to improve service outcomes. These
approaches offer public services bodies
the opportunity to engage customers and
gather insight into their preferences and
needs, and thereby provide the evidence
and intelligence needed to redesign
services to be more targeted, effective
and efficient.
About Lancashire
Lancashire is located in the North-West of
England and is a two tier authority made up
of 12 District Councils with a population of
nearly 1.1 million people. There are just over
500,000 households of which 12 per cent
of these are owned by local authorities or
registered social landlords.
Lancashire has a rapidly aging population
with 36 per cent of the population aged over
50+ which is expected to rise by 65 per
cent by 2031. Today 40 per cent of people
are aged 20-49 and 25 per cent are aged
between 0-19 years. Life expectancy rates
vary substantially across the county.
Lancashire has areas of deprivation, 156
super output areas are within the bottom
20 per cent of the most deprived areas in
England. Many of these areas are clustered
to the east of the county, which were once
areas of large scale cotton manufacturing.
Just over 21 per cent (240,000) of the total
population of Lancashire live in the bottom
20 per cent of the most deprived areas
in England. In one district in Lancashire
around 42 per cent of the population lives in
deprivation. In terms of income deprivation
18 per cent (212,390) of the total population
are income deprived.
Nine out of the twelve District Council areas
within Lancashire have a higher than the
national average number of ‘unfit dwellings’
with some areas having over 16 per cent of
dwellings classified as ‘unfit’.
Crime levels within Lancashire are lower
than Greater Manchester and Merseyside,
with crime rates falling by 8.7 per cent in
2008 and 2010, crime rates also fell across
all key categories with many significantly
below the national average.
Unemployment levels within Lancashire
are 5.7 per cent which is under the
nationalaverage of 7.6 per cent and the
trend seems to be continuing downwards.
There are however areas of the county
where unemployment is close to the national
average.
Customer-led transformation case study Lancashire: Assisted Bin Collection project
3
Background
The Assisted Bin Collection (ABC) for
Vulnerable Person’s Project arose out of
the work of the Lancashire Contact Centre
Partnership (LCCP).
Established in 2006, the LCCP comprises
Lancashire County Council and the District
Councils of Burnley; Chorley; Hyndburn;
Pendle; Ribble Valley and Rossendale. The
partners worked together to procure their
customer access infrastructure including their
CRM systems.
Having successfully delivered the shared
contact centre project, the partners continued
to meet quarterly to oversee the shared
service and look for opportunities to use
the shared infrastructure to improve service
delivery. The councils were interested in
working together to provide more services
at first point of contact to the customer
regardless of the provider of those services.
With this in mind, four councils began to
develop the idea of using their telephone
infrastructure and resources to conduct an
outbound campaign targeted at the needs of
vulnerable residents.
The partnership identified a number of
customer service access issues that they
wished to address. The partnership found
that, where the customer service agents were
able to spend time with customers who visited
or called the council, they were more likely
to diagnose their needs and refer additional
services. However, this depended on:
• customers being in contact with councils in
the first place
• the nature of customers’ initial enquiry,
and how the conversation with the council
unfolded
• customer service agents having the time
to spend with customers – more in-depth
conversations would only occur at their
less busy times
• customer service agents having knowledge
of the full range of services available from
across the public sector.
Following these findings four councils –
Lancashire County Council; Burnley Borough
Council; Pendle Borough Council and Ribble
Valley Council decided to work together
across the two tier environment to:
• help customers with some of the highest
needs
• attempt to lower their costs
• increase customer satisfaction.
4
The partners agreed that one potential
vulnerable customer group with high needs
were customers who qualified for the
Assisted Bin Collection service.
The councils speculated customers
who struggled to put their bin out every
week would possibly have other needs
which would be undiagnosed by various
government departments.
Before developing a bid for funding from
the Customer-Led Transformation Program,
Lancashire County Council conducted some
brief initial research with ten customers of
the ABC service. This indicated customers
were missing out on a wide range of services
because they:
• did not know the service existed
• were unsure which government
department delivered the service
• thought they would not be eligible for the
service.
The ambition of the work was to use
customer insight techniques, including socio
demographic profiling and face-to-face
interviewing to gain a deeper understanding
about:
• key customer group’s circumstances and
needs
• the range of services the partnership could
potentially offer to them
• how to formulate these service offerings
in terms of customers’ communication
preferences
• how to ensure maximum take-up of
services by customers once offered.
The project then used the insight to design
and implement a programme of outbound
calls to the target customer group to offer
them additional services and make referrals
to the appropriate service providers.
5
Objectives
The project aimed to use customer insight
to better understand this customer group’s
needs, and how the different tiers of
councils could most effectively engage
them, including targeting them with related
services. It then sought to use this insight
to engage the customer group and expand
the range of services they were using
as this would better support them to live
independently in their own homes and
reduce costly interventions at a later stage.
Specifically, the project sought to achieve the
following results:
• offer a range of additional services based
on need to a potential vulnerable customer
group who qualify for an assisted collection
• undertake a data extraction from relevant
back office systems to determine which
customers accessed the assisted collection
service
• gather customer insight direct from
customers who qualify for an assisted
collection
• produce customer journey maps to
establish the customer’s journey before
and after project implementation
• purchase customer telephone numbers
through a process known as teleappending
• design and implement changes within
Northgate’s front office Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) system
(that each of the councils use to enable
customer data sharing)
Through doing so the project aimed to deliver
the following outcomes:
• contact and engage 2500 customers in
dialogue
• enable 750 of those customers to take up
at least one additional service
• reduce avoidable contact within the ABC
service by 15 per cent – equivalent to 375
contacts
• enhance the Circle of Need methodology
• increase customer satisfaction with the ABC
service from 90 per cent to 95 per cent
• increase the levels of free smoke alarms
and fire prevention provided to citizen by
5 per cent – this represents 466 additional
customer for this service.
Of the 4,200 people using the Assisted Bin
Collection service, the project aimed to reach
2,500 of these by outbound calls via teleappending. The project didn’t expect to be
able to contact all users of the service by
telephone, due to many customers being
either ex-directory or registered with the
Telephone Preference Service.
Of those contacted, the project hoped 30
per cent of them would take up at least one
additional service each bringing a total of 750
additional ‘services’ delivered. For further
details on how the project performed against
these objectives, please see ‘Outcomes’.
• roll out the solution across three District
Councils in Lancashire
• embed the solution within business as
usual.
6
Approach
The project comprised multiple steps
of research work to better understand
the customer’s needs, followed by
‘implementation’ of the outbound calling
exercise based on the results of research.
The project progressed through the following
steps (each outlined in more detail below):
Research
• desk research
• staff workshop to discuss customer needs
• data matching service database with
Mosaic
• socio demographic profiling
• ‘Circle of Need’ analysis
• face-to-face interviewing.
Implementation
• outbound calling
• generating referrals to other service
providers
• monitoring take-up of services.
Research
At the beginning of the project, the team
profiled a small sample of 100 customer
records of people receiving the ABC service.
This showed users of the service were
typically members of the demographic
groups M (elderly people and state support)
and O (residents if in low rise social housing).
This supported the councils’ hypothesis
that the ABC service offered an appropriate
customer group to focus on as:
set would be ‘complete’. By contrast, the
Blue Badge service would only know about
customers who were already benefiting
from, or had enquired about, Blue Badges.
• Eligibility for the assisted collection is an
indicator of other health or social needs.
Customers using this service may well
have needs, as yet unmet, for other
services.
The project also held a workshop to discuss
customers’ communication preferences and
which services to promote. The consensus
of the workshop was that these customers
would be receptive to leaflets posted through
the letterbox and advertisements in the
local newspapers. The workshop suspected
that customers would not be receptive to
cold-calling and would not want their data
to be shared. They also assumed that the
project would uncover latent demand on
services such as concessionary travel. The
subsequent insight work proved many of
these assumptions were unfounded.
To gain a deeper understanding around the
customers who qualified for the Assisted
Bin Collection service it was decided to
undertake two work streams. These were:
• ‘desk based’ research using customer
profiling tools and techniques
• a series of in-depth customer interviews
(see ‘Interviewing’ on page 15).
“We had very positive feedback from
customers with over 80 per cent of them
agreeing for their data to be shared.“
Mark Edmondson, Ribble Valley BC
Desk research
• Refuse collection is provided to all
households, and consequently the data
7
The desk based research sought to
address several key questions, including:
• what do ‘typical’ ABC customers look like
across the three district partners?
• what are the mosaic groups and types
of people who use the ABC service?
• are their ‘typical’ customer groups across
the three District Council partners?
• what communication channel would
customers prefer to be contacted by?
• what are the customer’s likely needs?
The first step the project team took was to
cross reference data the councils held in the
ABC Service Register with the Mosaic
social-demographic groups.
Data matching
Profiling Customers on the Assisted
Bin Collection Register
The project team wanted to understand
at a high level the types of customers
which used the Assisted Bin Collection
service across each of the three district
partners. To gain a better understanding the
project used Experian’s Mosaic customer
segmentation tool set and combined it with
data extracted from the council’s back-office
systems. Experian’s Mosaic is a customer
segmentation tool which segments people
into one of 15 groups and then into one of 69
types.
The project extracted those customers that
were on the Assisted Bin Collection register
from various back office databases held
within each of the partner organisations. The
total number of records which were profiled
was 4,227 across the three district partners.
The records which were successfully profiled
are outlined in the table below:
Matching service data to socio-demographic groups
Partner authority
Burnley Borough Council
Pendle Borough Council
Ribble Valley Borough Council
Total
Number of records to
match against Mosaic
1,444
1,636
1,147
4,227
Successfully
matched
1,308
1,503
977
3,788
Percentage
match
90.5 per cent
91.8 per cent
85 per cent
89 per cent
Socio-demographic groups using the assisted bin collection services
As the table below illustrates, of the 3,788 records successfully matched against the
15 Mosaic groups across the three councils, the following socio-demographic groups were
most likely to use the Assisted Bin Collection service.
Mosaic group
M
J
O
B
K
8
Description
Elderly people reliant on state support
Owner occupiers in older style housing in ex-industrial areas
Families in low-rise social housing with high levels of benefit need
Residents in small and mid-sized town with strong local roots
Residents with sufficient incomes in right-to-buy social housing
Top 15 segments using the ABC service across the three councils
Of those houses matched to Mosaic, the top 15 segments (out of a total of 45) contained
eighty-seven per cent of service users.
Local Authority
Burnley Borough
Pendle Borough
Ribble Valley
M
M
B
Burnley Borough
O
Pendle Borough
K
Pendle Borough
J
Pendle Borough
I
Pendle Borough
O
Ribble Valley
L
Burnley Borough
I
Ribble Valley
Burnley Borough
M
K
Burnley Borough
B
Burnley Borough
J
Ribble Valley
D
Ribble Valley
J
Total
Socio-demographic group
Residents in small and mid-sized town with strong
local roots
Families in a low-rise social housing with high levels
of benefit need
Residents with sufficient incomes in right-to-buy
social housing
Owner occupiers in older style housing in exindustrial areas
Lower income workers in urban terraces in often
diverse areas
Families in a low-rise social housing with high levels
of benefit need
Active elderly people living in pleasant retirement
locations
Lower income workers in urban terraces in often
diverse areas
Residents with sufficient incomes in right-to-buy
social housing
Residents in small and mid-sized town with strong
local roots
Successful professionals living in sub-urban or semirural homes
Houses
438
336
280
249
221
211
205
176
169
165
163
151
140
130
128
121
3283
9
Top 15 segments using the ABC service
across the three councils
This data provided an important insight into
the different types of customers accessing
the service. Interestingly, whereas the largest
group in Pendle and Burnley were ‘elderly
people reliant on State support’, the largest
group in Ribble Valley – a more affluent
Borough – were ‘residents in small and midsized towns with strong local roots’.
This latter group was considerably smaller
in Pendle and Burnley, suggesting that
customers who could articulate their
requirements and navigate the council, or
had a support network of family and friends
to help, so were successfully accessing the
services they needed. This supported the
hypothesis that there was latent demand for
ABC and other services from other customer
groups, and that the councils would need to
ease access to services for these groups.
These socio-demographic profiles
provided insight into service users:
• financial circumstances
• employment status
• educational attainment
The socio-demographic profiling enabled
the team to draw up pen portraits of typical
customers of the Assisted Bin Collection
service. These pen portraits helped the team
to conduct the ‘Circle of Need’ analysis later
on (see below). Three examples of typical
customers of Pendle Borough Council are
depicted below.
Typical customer 1
Charles and Audrey
Charles is 72 years old and lives with his
wife Audrey, 70. They have been married
for 47 years, Charles was a partner in
his own accountancy firm with 3 other
friends. The business was sold a number
of years ago. Audrey was a primary school
teacher for a number of years but stopped
teaching to bring up their children, Andrew
and Emma who are both married and have
their own families. Charles and Audrey live
in a three bedroom spacious bungalow but
with a steep driveway to the garage at the
bottom. Being traditional in nature, face to
face contact with government departments
and agencies is still preferred. Telephone
is only used when the offices are closed.
• media consumption
10
Typical customer 2
Bob and Sue
Bob is 64 years old and lives with Sue
who is 62. They have been married for a
number of years and have lived in their
semi-detached house for the last 30
years. Bob worked at a local engineering
plant, where he started as an apprentice
and trained to become a machinist.
Many years later he worked his way up
to be work shop manager, unfortunately
Bob retired on health grounds perhaps
cause by dust and metal he breathed in
for many years within the machine shop
atmosphere. Sue worked in the local
supermarket as a checkout operator her
proudest moment was when she earned
her 25 year service award. Bob and Sue
have one child, Tom who lives nearby
with his wife and 2 year old daughter.
Typical customer 3
Junaid and Fazeela
Junaid and Fazeela emigrated to Britain
25 years ago. They managed to find
work in the old textile mills around the
East Lancashire area. As these have
now mostly closed down Fazeela is an
office cleaner and Junaid works as a
delivery driver, both earn just above the
minimum wage. They have 3 children
who all still live at their terrace house
near a main road. Junaid has a number
of concerns for his young family as he
has been a victim of a number of low
level race related incidents.
11
Circle of need analysis
The next step was to take the social demographic profiles and conduct a ‘Circle of Need’
analysis which would map and highlight the full range of public services that could be relevant
to these customers’ circumstances. Based on this exercise, ‘Circles of Needs’
were developed for each ‘typical’ customer highlighted.
Circle of need for Junaid and Fazeela
in need of
learning
resources and
support
being a citizen
affected by crime
or anti-social
behaviour
in need of
access to an
active and
supportive
community
in need of social
integration
in need of
employment
Junaid and Fazeela
in need of
improved
accommodation
birth and
parenting
medical
treatment,
assistance and
advice
12
in need of
financial security
language/culture
Profiling customer needs
After ‘typical’ customers from across the three local authorities were identified the next step
was to examine their needs and determine if there were any common customer needs.
The table below identifies a common set of customer needs based analysing the mosaic
profiles using the ‘Circles of Need’ model in further detail:
Circles of need by socio-demographic
The results identified a common set of
customer needs. The main common needs
were:
• social integration
• financial security
• of bereavement support
• improved accommodation
• learning resources and support
• medical treatment assistance and advice
• the need to be active
The needs with the least amount of typical
customer groups were:
• access to an active and supportive
community
• language and culture
• being creative
• mental or physical capacity
Typical customer groups with the most needs
are: ‘Junaid and Fuzeela’ (depicted above),
‘Val and Dave’, ‘Rita’ and ‘Alison’. These
customer groups also share the common
needs of
• financial security
• improved accommodation
• being a citizen affected by crime and
anti-social behaviour
• medical treatment advice and assistance
13
From the needs identified above it was
decided to ascertain if the following services
were suitable to offer customers:
• 78 per cent of typical customers preferred
more traditional face to face contact
• welfare rights/benefit health checks
• 78 per cent of typical customer’s liked to
read the local newspaper. Any promotion
and publicity of the outbound calling
exercise to increase levels of take up could
be worthwhile through this communication
channel.
• home improvement grants (specifically
around home insulation and warm front
grants)
• 33 per cent of the typical customers
preferred post as a channel of
communication
• free home fire safety checks
• 33 per cent of people regularly read
magazines, this however covered the
whole spectrum of the magazine market
and unfortunately no further specific details
could be obtained
• concessionary travel passes
• adult social care
• free prescription deliveries
The suitability of the services identified would
be tested with a sample of customers during
the second work stream when customers
were interviewed as part of the more ‘deeper’
customer insight gathering exercise.
Identifying typical customers
channel preferences
In order to help diagnose as many customer
needs as possible and maximise take
up of services, it was important to gain
an understanding of the most effective
channel(s) to communicate services to
customers. When the Mosaic dataset was
examined in detail for each of the typical
customer groups a number of patterns
immediately emerged:
14
• telephone and internet were not
recognised as major communication
channels by any of the typical customer
groups identified
The table below gives a high level snapshot
of the communication channels preferred
by the ‘typical’ customer groups identified.
The next steps were to extend the socio
demographic profiling with a ‘deeper’
understanding of ABC customers through
face-to-face interviewing.
Interviewing
Given customer’s preference for face-toface communications, the project then
undertook a series of in-depth face-to-face
interviews to gather greater insight into
the needs of the target group. The project
manager along with representatives from the
District Councils conducted twenty in-depth
customer interviews totalling nearly 40 hours.
Customers were selected for interview based
on the following criteria:
• The partnership decided to focus
the interviews in the areas of highest
deprivation and need in the boroughs of
Burnley and Pendle. By contract, service
users in Ribble Valley tend to be more
affluent.
• A suitable cross section of customers from
each Mosaic group needed to be identified
and interviewed.
What is Teleappending?
Teleappending is the process whereby
an organisation or individual purchases
telephone numbers which are in the
public domain. Customer data submitted
for teleappending has to include:
The customer’s full name (forename/
surname), address and postcode. This
data is then matched by a 3rd party
company against:
• the BT phone directory
• other publicly available telephone
directories and
• the mobile phone directory.
Teleappending is extensively used
within the commercial sector main users
of teleappending services are contact
centres which make outbound typically
sales based calls. Organisations can
use teleappending as a way of cleansing
their customer databases to ensure
they contain accurate and up to date
information.
15
Mosaic profiles of customers selected forinterview
The table below provides details of the customers Mosaic groups and types
selected for interview.
Socio demographic profile of interviewees
Volume of
customers
2
Mosaic groups
Group E: Middle income families living in E19: Self-reliant older families
moderate suburban semis
in suburban semis in industrial
towns (1)
2
Group J: Owner occupiers in older-style
housing in ex-industrial areas
4
Group K: Residents with sufficient
incomes in right-to-buy social housing
3
Group L: Active elderly people living in
pleasant retirement locations
6
Group M: Elderly people reliant on state
support
accommodation
designed for
older people (2)
3
Mosaic type
E20: Upwardly mobile South
Asian families living in inter war
suburbs (1)
J45: Low income communities
reliant on low skill industrial
jobs (2)
K49: Low income older couples
long established in former
council estates (1)
K50: Older families in low
value housing in traditional
industrial areas (3)
L54: Retired people of modest
means commonly living in
seaside bungalows (3)
M56: Older people living on
social housing estates with
limited budgets (2)
M57: Old people in flats
subsisting on welfare
payments (2)
Group 0: Families in low-rise social
housing with high levels of benefit need
M59: People living in social
O67: Older tenants on low rise
social housing estates where
jobs are scarce (3)
* The figures in brackets contain the number of customers the councils interviewed from
each Mosaic type.
16
Interview questions
The interviews asked the following questions:
1. How did you learn about the Assisted Bin
Collection service?
2. What made you have this service –
how did it come about you needed this
service?
3. Please can you tell me about the
services which you currently receive
from the Government?
4. If you contacted the council about your
Assisted Bin Collection how would you
feel if additional services (at no cost)
were offered to you?
5. If your local council was going to contact
you and offer you additional services how
would you like to be contacted?
6. I would like to present you with a list of
services which we may offer customers.
These will be at no cost. Please could
you indicate which you already receive,
which you would like and which you are
not interested in?
7. To allow us to deliver a range of services
from across government we may have to
share you details with other government
departments such as: The NHS, the Fire
Service and the County Council. If this
was done securely would you allow your
personal information to be shared?
The results and insights arising from these
interviews are outlined under ‘Findings’.
Implementation
Following the customer insight work stream
there was a clear direction from customers
around what channel should be used to
contact them, the services to offer and their
views on data sharing.
The next steps were to:
• obtain customers telephone numbers via
a process known as teleappending
• design, build and test a process within
Northgate’s Front Office Customer
relationship Management (CRM) system
which will allow customer details to
be captured and shared with service
providers.
Results from Teleappending
The councils anticipated that teleappending
would not provide a means of contacting all
relevant residents. For example, many of
the residents of the three boroughs would
either be ex-directory or on the Telephone
Preference Service, as the table below
illustrates.
Result of the teleappending data
matching
• 67 per cent total match rate which included
ex-directory flags and telephone numbers
returned
• 31 per cent of total data returned
a telephone number
• 23 per cent of the data-file returned
a telephone preference service flag.
Result of the teleappending data matching
Total number
of records
No
Matches
130,731
39,961
Telephone
Preference Service
(TPS) flags
30,240
Ex –Directory
Flags (XD)
Telephone numbers
returned
48,023
41,879
17
A guide to teleappending has been produced
which covers data protection, potential
teleappending suppliers and outline costs.
This is available on the communities of
practice website.
Designing the CRM system
The partners built a new process in their
Front Office CRM system. This CRM
system was jointly procured by the councils
as part of the Lancashire Contact Centre
Partnership. This allowed:
• customer data to be shared across
government
• reporting to be undertaken to assist in
determining the overall success of the project
• services to be offered from a selection
of providers not just local authorities
• customer data to be collected once
and used many times.
Outbound calls
The three District Councils conducted the
outbound calling between December 2010
and end of February 2011, contacting a total
of 1,712 customers.
The outbound calling exercise was hugely
successful and surpassed all initial targets
which were set for the project. At one point,
the back offices of some service providers
were struggling to cope with the demand
generated by the outbound calling exercise.
The project scaled back the volume of
its outbound calling so demand could be
managed successfully.
The interviewing was based on open-ended
questioning which allowed customers to
explain their life history and events leading to
their current circumstances and needs. This
allowed the interviewer to view the customer
‘in the round’, and make the customer aware
of services they might otherwise have been
aware of. For instance many customers
18
did not realise that social services such as
Help Direct would be to provide them with
help of gardening. Conversely, the project
discovered that almost all those eligible for
concessionary travel were already benefiting
from the service.
Prior to calling, the councils sent each
prospective respondent a letter on official letter
headed paper explaining that they would be in
contact by telephone. The project also worked
with contact centre agents and provided
training and scripts to help to establish trust
with the customer and help the customer to
discuss their needs over the telephone.
The outbound calling exercise proved a
great success, and indicated that – although
customers may complain about services –
the local council does seem to be a trusted
establishment in citizen’s eyes. The project
reports that no residents were unreceptive to
the council’s call.
The outbound calling exercise also provided
the council with an opportunity to have a
conversation with customers. For example,
many customers were initially dismissive
of their eligibility to a blue badge often
commenting that “we don’t drive anymore”.
The customer service agent took the
opportunity to explain the blue badges can
be used by friends and family when they
drive the blue badge holder.
Depending on the service selected the
customer would then:
Referrals
The CRM system was designed and set up so
the Customer Service Officer (CSO) had the
majority of the information on their screen to
advise the customer on the service which was
being offered. This meant that with little training
the CSO was able to answer the majority of
the questions a customer may have about the
service but also advise the customer why a
particular service might be suitable for their
needs.
• receive benefit-related information and
leaflets (Welfare Rights Servcie: benefit
information request)
When a customer stated they wanted to
access a service and gave their consent
to share their information with another
government department (if applicable) the
CRM system automatically generated an email
to the relevant service providing the customers
contact details, any information stated during
the call (if applicable to that service) and
answers to any pre-set eligibility questions.
• receive a follow up telephone call
conducting a benefits health-check
(Welfare Rights Service: benefit review)
• receive a telephone call to book an
appointment for a home fire safety
inspection/fitting of a free smoke alarm
(Lancashire Fire and Rescue home fire
safety check service)
• be called to be assessed by Help Direct
Service for low level social care needs
• receive a Blue Badge application form in
the post (blue badge service)
• receive via post or telephone (depending
on the project partner) the results of a
home insulation grant.
• be informed by the CSO about pharmacies
which offer the free prescription delivery
service and how to obtain this service.
The referrals made for each individual service per authority are shown in the table below:
Authority
Burnley
Borough
Council
Pendle
Borough
Council
Ribble
Valley
Borough
Council
Totals
Home
Fire
Safety
Checks
Benefit
Health
Checks
Low level
social
care (Help
Direct)
Blue
Badges
Warm Front
Free
prescription
deliveries
124
132
82
88
2
0
128
110
66
46
47
20
36
55
71
39
23
12
288
297
219
173
72
32
19
Monitoring take-up
1130 services were requested by residents
during the outbound calling exercise. The
service requests were distributed to the
relevant service provider as ‘referrals’.
Making referrals to a service is important
but it is more important to ensure the
customer actually accesses those services.
To measure the amount of services which
were actually accessed a sample of cases
were taken from across each of the six
service areas. The customer’s details were
then passed to the relevant service area to
establish whether:
“Enabling people to access services –
from both local authorities and the local
voluntary sector – can do a great deal to
enhance people’s quality of life. Some
of the people we spoke to simply did not
leave their home. Following contact with
the council, they can now use the bus
service and or the blue badge scheme
and the exercise has introduced them to
a network of people they can rely on the
support in the future.”
Gaby Nelson, Director of Customer
Access, One Connect Ltd, a Joint
Venture between Lancashire County
Council and BT
• the customer had successfully accessed
the service
• the service was actually delivered to the
customer
The results are outlined in the table below:
Volume of
take-up
Per
centage
take-up
Home fire
safety
checks
30
Benefit
health
checks
28
Low level
social care
Blue
badges
Warm
front
30
9
13
Free
prescription
deliveries
30
100
per cent
93
per cent
100
per cent(1)
30
per cent
43
per cent(2)
100
per cent
Total percentage take-up: 77.7 per cent
1. Help Direct stated there were a number
of cases when they contacted the
customer and carried out a more in-depth
assessment of their needs. This resulted
in a number of additional services being
delivered from within the Help Direct
service portfolio. For example Help
Direct informed us via their own internal
reporting of 49 customers contacted,
(from one authority making the referrals to
them) 133 services were accessed. The
project had originally sent a total of 290
20
referrals to Help Direct. The partnership
has interpreted this as indicating that
vulnerable people have a great range of
needs that are currently being missed.
2. Soon after outbound calling had
commenced the project learnt the national
‘Warm Front’ programme had ceased
taking applications for this service,
meaning that referrals intended for this
programme need to be re-directed.
However across all three district partners
there was a local grant scheme in place
Customers claimed either a wide range of
benefits they were entitled to or none at all
other than the statutory state benefits. This
confirms the projects initial thinking around
‘expert’ customers.
which operated under each authorities
own individual criteria. Referrals were
included to these local schemes.
Findings
Use of service
The insight work stream made the following
discoveries about customers using the ABC
service.
• Only one in five customers of the service
found out about service by proactively
enquiring at the Council directly. Most
people using the service either found
out from friends and family, or through a
council publication or referral from social
worker or a health worker.
• Use of the service is often triggered by
major life events, such as an accident or
major illness.
The interviews also generated the following
insight into what services people access:
• Free prescription deliveries is a service
many customers stated they access. The
PCT informed the project team that levels
of take up for this service tend to be very
low and there is some confusion between
this service and free prescriptions the
NHS provided to people aged over 60.
Pharmacies also collect prescriptions from
local doctors for free and then have them
ready for the customer to collect – but this
is also different to the free prescription
delivery service. The PCT informed the
project this is another area of confusion.
• State retirement pensions were in line with
the projects expectations especially as
anyone over the eligible age can claim this
benefit if entitled.
• The project was surprised to see the
variation in types of benefit claimed.
Carers’ allowance
Industrial injuries benefit
Panic alarm
War disablement
Council tax benefits
Housing benefit
Income support
Blue badge
Widows’ benefit
Smoke alarm
Home insulation
Mobility car
Disability living allowance
Council house
Social care
Attendance allowance
Single person discount
Concessionary travel
Pension credit
Free prescription delivery
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
State pension
Government services accessed by customers interviewed
21
• The volume of people who have free
concessionary travel passes is higher than
initially expected by the project.
• Given the cold weather at the beginning of
January and February 2010 and messages
in the press around increases in gas and
electricity prices it is surprising the volume
of people who have not enquired as to
their eligibility of a ‘Warm Front’ grant.
Communication
Three out of four respondents were in favour
of being offered additional services as long
as this did not come across as a ‘sales pitch’,
and would be happy to be contacted by the
council as long as the council made it clear
who was contacting them.
Telephone was seen as the most favourable
channel to contact customers to offer
additional services by some margin, with
over 55 per cent of customers stating this.
Given a number of customers interviewed
were elderly (aged over 65) the home visit
option also featured highly. Customers said
they could take the opportunity to see the
council officers name badge and also ask
any questions to alleviate suspicions they
might have about the service offer.
7%
16%
Customer channel preferences
Chart to show channels interviewees
wish to be contacted by to offer additional
services from across government
4
8
2
17
Internet
Leaflet
Home visits
Telephone
Assisted bin collection take-up of services
3%
27%
Free prescription delivery
Warm Front
Blue badges
Low level social care
Benefit health checks
20%
22
27%
Home fires safety checks
Interest in additional services
Service
Home Fire Safety
Checks
Blue Badges
Low level Adult Social
Care
Warm Front / home
insulation grants
Concessionary Travel
Free prescription
delivery
Single person council
tax discount
Service to check
eligibility for various
benefits
Would be
interested in this
service
10 (50%)
Currently in
receipt of
service
10 (50%)
Not interested in this
service or not eligible
6 (30%)
6 (30%)
8 (40%)
14 (70%)
6 (30%)
0 (0%)
9 (45%)
9 (45%)
2 (10%)
1 (5%)
12 (60%)
19 (95%)
6 (30%)
0 (0%)
2 (10%)
0 (0%)
5 (25%)
15 (75%)
12 (60%)
2 (10%)
6 (30%)
From the results above it was decided to
offer customers the following services:
• home fire safety checks
• low level adult social care
0 (0%)
Referrals
The pie chart opposite, bottom left, shows
a breakdown in percentage terms of the
services which customers expressed an
interest in accessing.
• blue badges
• warm front grants
• free prescription deliveries
• benefit health checks.
Use of data
Contrary to the project’s expectations, the
results of this survey show the vast majority
(80 per cent) of customers are in favour of
data sharing providing it results in something
which will benefit them. (i.e. a service being
delivered to them). These findings informed
a number of critical project decisions which
followed including the nature of the customer
engagement (direct, and by telephone rather
than literature) and the services offered
through that interaction.
“In terms of timing we carried out nearly 40
hours of face-to-face interviews to validate
the desk-based research that we did.“
Kris Boardman, project manager at
Lancashire County Council
23
Outcomes
Financial benefits
Fire Prevention
While it is impossible to say how many fires
have been avoided due to the 288 Home Fire
Safety Checks and smoke alarm installations
that have been conducted, evidence from
Merseyside Fire and Rescue estimates the
cost of a call out by the fire and rescue service
to be £20,000. If this project has helped
prevent a small number of fires within the
home this would have more than justified the
project’s funding. The number of accidental
household fires within Lancashire has reduced
by nearly 5 per cent over 3 years. The year on
year number of accidental household fires has
remained static from 2008/2009 to 2009/2010
at 1238 fires and then reduced by 5 per cent
to 1161 fires in 2010/2011. If each fire costs
around £20,000 to the Fire and Rescue
authority, this reduction equates to a saving of
around £400,000 per year.
Moreover, the cost of fire in terms of damage
to property within Lancashire is on average
£26,043 per fire. Therefore any reduction
in the number of fires therefore reduces
the overall cost of damage to property,
processions and the surrounding area. Other
costs which have not been factored into this
figure are re-housing costs. The costs of rehousing can vary depending on the severity
of the fire and if the occupier is re-housed to
private rented accommodation, a registered
social landlord or local authority housing or
chooses to live with extended family. As a
guide average rental costs within Lancashire
for a three bedroom house are around £520
to £600 per calendar month.
Lancashire Fire and Rescue provide the
project with a number of key performance
indicators where the home fire safety checks
have been a major contributor to a positive
performance. For example, the number
of fatalities recorded as a result of a fire
has reduced from 14 in 2009/2010 to 9 in
2010/2011.
Lancashire Fire and Rescue have also
informed the project that two of the fatalities
could have been prevented if a home fire
safety checks had been carried out. A 94
year old lady died as a result of a faulty
electric blanket. More distressing is a 49
year old disabled person in Pendle (who
more than likely would have qualified for the
Assisted Bin Collection service), died as a
result of a house fire. One cannot help but
wonder if the project reached this person in
time and they had a home fire safety check
referral it would have saved their life.
Lancashire Fire and Rescue household fire statistics
2008/2009
2009/2010
2010/2011
Apr-Aug 2011
(Annualised in brackets)
Number of
accidental
household fires
1238
1238
1161
426* (1022)
Non-fatal fire
casualties
Number of fatalities
155
120
117
37* (89)
12
14
9
3* (7)
*subject to audit
24
The number of non-fatal fire casualties has
also reduced over the last three years. In
2008 / 2009 there were 155 non-fatal fire
casualties in 2010 / 2011 has reduced to 117.
Lancashire Fire and Rescue state that “the
home fire safety check programme remains
a significant contributory factor” in these
successes.
There are other ‘softer’ benefits for the
customer, such as:
Preventative social services
The partnership estimates that the cost of
providing an older person with a residential
care amounts to approximately £13,000 per
year. Based on a sample of 49 of a total of
219 referrals to Help Direct, five customers
who were contacted by Help Direct following
a referral from the project were further
referred for to Adult Social Care for a more in
depth needs assessment. Help Direct’s remit
is to diagnose ‘low level’ needs therefore any
referrals made by them to Adult Social Care,
means that a customer’s needs are likely to
be medium to high.
• there is some evidence to support that
it can help to delay the onset of mental
health and cognitive decline.
Part of Lancashire County Council’s strategy
is to post-pone social care customers
admission to a funded residential care
home though proactively taking preventative
measures. If within Lancashire the average
age of each person admitted to funded care
is postponed by three months in any one
year the authority would save – over a period
of three years – £4m a year.
Assuming the five customers who have been
helped by social care by this project are
able to stay in their own home three months
longer than this will have saved at least
£16,250. If this sample is representative of
the 219 customer referred to Help Direct,
then 22 older people will have been able to
stay in their homes for three months longer
and the project would have saved Lancashire
County Council approximately £71,500.
• it helps improves customers’ quality of
life as they are able to maintain their
independence
• customers are able to live in their own
homes for longer
In addition 62 customers were also provided
with home improvement services. These can
take the form of simple measures to make
the home safe from accidents (such as slips,
trips and falls) to minor household repairs
and maintenance. These services are offered
free or for a small fee. The fee covers the
cost of any parts / materials required but not
the handy person time.
Lancashire County Council assumes for each
referral to this service 1 in 10 people (10
per cent) will not have an accident around
the home preventing the need for funded
residential care. As this figure also included
home adaptations a more conservative figure
of 1 in 20 (5 per cent) will be used. In terms
of the project this means that a further 3
customers would remain in their home for a
further 3 months, saving a further £9,750.
Benefit health checks
Almost 300 referrals were made to the
Welfare Rights Servcie for a benefits health
check. Of the 300 cases 105 customers went
on to receive a full benefits health check
from the Welfare Rights Servcie. The 195
customers who did not have a benefits health
check were because:
• they had already had one completed by
Welfare Rights recently
25
• after a brief discussion it was identified
that their chances of receiving any extra
benefits were very low due to for example
their level of savings.
Of the 105 referrals 28 cases are still being
processed and the outcome is not yet known.
However, there were 44 successful claims
for additional benefits entitlements totalling
an additional £2015.56 per week and around
£104,800 per year.
Using similar ratios for the 28 outstanding
cases, the project estimates that residents
may receive an additional £630 per week,
equivalent to £32,760 per year.
Added together this would result in an
estimated £2,645 per week / £137,540 per
year in additional benefits.
Removing customers who do not
qualify for the service
The project found a small number of savings
which came about unexpectedly from the
project. The project found when contacting
customers there were a number of people
who had moved away from the property
which the Assisted Bin Collection service was
being delivered to. Those District Council
partners with outsourced waste management
services were being charged a fee of around
£1 per household per assisted collection.
By removing the household from the assisted
bin register this prevented the small charge
being levied on the council by the contractor.
This resulted in a small saving of around
£250 per year for one authority, but more
importantly highlighted the importance of
keeping records up to date.
26
Positive customer feedback
As part of validating the results of the
outbound calling exercise it was important
to understand what customers thought of
the service. The findings of the customer
feedback were important to the project
as this was the first time across all three
authorities an outbound calling exercise on
this scale had been undertaken. Opposite
are selections of comments received:
Quotes from residents interviewed as part
of the project
“I had no idea I would be entitled to
attendance allowance for looking after my
wife, the additional money will come in
useful as everything is going up”.
“I can’t understand why other companies
can’t phone me up like you have done it
would make everything much easier”.
“I don’t have a fire alarm fitted, and I am
also quite deaf” Burnley Council identified
this need and passed the customers
details to Lancashire Fire and Rescue.
“Also an extra alarm (was fitted) that
vibrates to alert me as I struggle to hear
a normal smoke alarm. I now feel safe
in my home. I would never have known
about this service and continued to live at
risk without their help”.
“Without the help of Burnley Council, I
would not have known about the help I
could receive from Social Services”.
“I had my house decorated three years
ago and took the smoke alarms down
when the decorators were in. I have
never replaced these and it was great the
council had contacted me and offered this
service on behalf of the fire service”.
“I had a chip pan fire over ten years ago
and still have not had smoke alarms
fitted, I suppose having already had a fire
I would try and prevent another occurring
but I haven’t”.
Outputs
The project has produced:
• A ‘Guide to Teleappending’, which covers
data protection, potential teleappending
suppliers and outline costs. This is
available on the LGI&D communities of
practice website.
• A detailed CRM implementation
guide providing detailed instructions
on the process developed complete
with the relevant data files to install the
process on another Northgate Front
Office environment (also available on the
communities of practice website).
• Customer Journey Mapping: Journeys
of how ten customers interviewed ended
up obtaining the assisted bins collection
service. Document shows their ‘journey’
through government services.
• Customer insight paper part 1:
Document explains the process and results
of matching customer data to Mosaic
data. It explains how we reach some early
conclusions prior to validating the results
with customers.
• ‘Typical Customers Circles of Need’:
To better understand typical users of the
assisted bin service further a series of
‘typical’ service users were drawn up from
across the three authorities. This brought
the results of the segmentation to life
and build up a picture about Assisted Bin
Collection users.
• Customer insight paper part 2:
Document outlines the results of our 20 in
depth customer interviews and outlines why
the project chose the communication channel,
services and method of contact it did.
27
• Output Area Classification (OAC)
customer segments mapped to Circles
of Need: document shows the various
needs customer may have depending on
their customer segment within the OAC
product.
• Mosaic customer segments mapped
to Circles of Need: document shows
the various needs a customer may have
depending on their customer segment
within the mosaic product.
• New Circles of Need: A series of new
circles of need based on a customer’s life
events and other needs identified during
the projects.
• Lessons Learnt: Document showing four
key lessons learnt throughout the projects
life.
• Final Report: Pulls together all of the
above documents in one summary
document with results from the outbound
calling exercise.
Governance and resourcing
The project used the governance
arrangements of the Lancashire Contact
Centre Partnership, which – since it
manages a £7m contract for CRM and
telephony infrastructure robust governance
arrangements are already in place. The
project was managed and resources via the
Lancashire Contact Centre Partnership, with
project management provided by the LCCP’s
Partnership Programme Manager.
The project reported to the Lancashire
Contact Centre Partnership’s monthly
Programme Board meeting. The Programme
Board comprises of Heads of Service or
delegated representatives from across the
partnership. Each month the project produced
a highlight report to the board outlining what
had been achieved and next steps.
The project also reported to the LCCP’s
Partnership Board, which comprises
Directors from each partner organisation.
The project used this to report ‘exceptions’
to the work plan and to gain approval for
changing to the project scope or timescales.
The Partnership Board was the forum which
discussed and agreed to focus resources
on delivering outcomes to customer before
Christmas following the IT delays.
Each Council took responsibility for ensuring
that their respective Local Strategic
Partnerships (LSP) were informed of
the projects at a local level. The project
supported the following thematic groups at
LSP level:
Burnley:
• Healthy Communities
• Safer Communities
28
Ribble Valley:
• Older People
• Healthy Communities
Pendle:
• Pendle Compact – Strengthening
partnership working across public, private
and voluntary sectors.
• Community Strategy – Improving the life
of people in Pendle.
The project’s track record and its support
of the Prevention Agenda will help to pave
the way for additional service offerings and
further partnership working in the future.
Challenges and
lessons learnt
Customers know what and how government
should deliver services, so ask them!
Many people involved in the project had
preconceived ideas about what customers
wanted, and had expectations about what
customers would think about:
• the service delivery process
• data sharing across government.
• a council contacting them via telephone.
• making an additional service offer and
• if telephone was the right channel to make
this offer.
Nearly 40 hours of face to face customer
insight gathering took place as part of this
project. This helped to dispel the above
myths as it was found:
• customers were happy with the process
designed when tested on them.
• providing customers were informed and
consent was gained customers were happy
to share their data across government.
• telephone was the preferred channel of
choice for customer contact by some
margin.
• customers thought the council proactively
offering additional services was the good
idea.
• teleappending: the process of purchasing
customer telephone numbers legally
The project needed a cost effective solution
to obtain a customer’s telephone number
in order to make the service offer. The
project considered extracting contact data
from the Council Tax system or the Waste
Management systems.
However there were several issues with this
solution. Firstly, customers on the Assisted
Bin Collection register would have to be
manually located from the council tax extract.
This approach would have been too timeconsuming. The second issue was only
one District Council partner had collected
a customer’s telephone number when a
customer had requested the ABC service.
At this point the project then considered
teleappending, which offers the opportunity
to purchase a customer’s telephone number
from a third party. All telephone numbers
are already in the public domain (i.e. the
telephone book) and can be used for
contacting a customer. With teleappending,
the council would only have been able to
contact resident for whom they already had a
telephone number.
Without teleappending the project would
have been unable to contact customers by
telephone and more traditional means of
advising customers such as leaflets or a
mass mailing exercises would need to be
employed. This would have resulted in a
lower take up of services.
29
Migration of activities to different
versions of the same IT package
The outbound calling exercise used
Northgate’s Front Office CRM system to
log customer data and share the data with
service deliver partners.
The process was built in a test environment
with the idea this would be migrated to a
live environment within Lancashire County
Council and then shared across the three
District Council partners. The migration
worked as expected for two out of the three
partners. The third council was running an
older version of the system.
As a result the process would not migrate
and function correctly. The project should
have developed and built the process in an
older version of Front Office and migrated
to the more recent version. The opposite
approach was unfortunately implemented
with the activity being developed in the most
recent version available and migrated to an
older version.
Resolving the problem through an upgrade
was not feasible due to timing – the District
Councils were facing peak seasonal demand
followed by the Christmas leave period.
The key lesson learnt is to carefully
check system requirements in relation to
migration activity prior to building any new
processes within a system. This is especially
important if working on a project as part of a
partnership operating common systems.
Focus on delivery
The original plan for the project had been
to undertake the customer insight work
and outbound calling exercise in parallel
with reviewing and enhancing the Circle
of Need methodology. However, the
aforementioned IT issues impacting the
project and the project team decided to
‘focus on delivery’ i.e. postponing its efforts
30
on the enhancement of the Circle of Need
Methodology to instead devote attention to
overcoming system issues and conducting
the outbound calling.
This decision was taken because it was seen
as critical for the project to start delivering
the additional service offer to some of the
most vulnerable customers in Lancashire to
better support them live independent lives
for longer plus reduce the need for more
expensive interventions at a later stage. The
decision to ‘focus on delivery’ meant the
outbound calling phase of the project started
on time and according to the project plan.
Next steps
The four authorities who were involved in
this project have stated that they want the
current process to remain in place and
become part of business as usual. Although
the volumes of new customers who access
the Assisted Bin Collection project across the
three District Councils are expected to be
low (around 1-3 per week) it will mean new
customers to the service will still be able to
take advantage of the additional service offer
if they choose to do so.
Maintaining the service within business as
usual was particularly important to the project
especially as it:
• has already been identified and evidenced
that people within this customer group
have potentially high needs
• due to the increasing aging population
within the three partners the assisted bin
service is expected to be a service which
will grow in terms of the people who need
to access it over the course of the next few
years
• we want to use the concept to try and
promote the benefits and the idea to other
District Councils within Lancashire area
and beyond.
The project highlighted that outbound
calling does work within the public sector
as does offering additional services to the
customer based on their needs. The three
District Councils are already examining other
services which the same methodology could
be applied to.
software development which in the current
climate could be difficult to justify, despite
the benefit it may bring and is a long term
project. Other services which have been
identified a ‘trigger points’ for additional
services are:
The councils are considering wrapping
services around a customers need based on
their mosaic profile. If a customer contacts
an authority regardless of the service
and their mosaic profile (which has been
preloaded on to a CRM system) indicates
they are from one of the mosaic types with
high needs, then predetermined services
could be offered to that customer based on
their mosaic profile. This methodology would
take the thinking from this project one stage
further as it will not depend on a ‘trigger
service’ such as assisted bins for customer
to receive the offer of additional services. By
only offering the additional services based
on mosaic customer groups with high needs
this will ensure services are targeted to
customers who need them the most.
• requests for blue badges
Although the above point is feasible it
is dependent on an investment in CRM
• any benefit related enquiry
• requests for single person discount forms
• requests for leisure services (i.e. informing
the customer of other leisure activities
within the local area, linked to the healthy
lifestyles agenda).
The timescales for the above items are as
follows:
• continue the offer of additional services for
new customers who access the assisted
bins collection service – Already in place
ongoing.
• wrapping services around need based on
their mosaic profile (2-3 years)
• offering additional services based on
further trigger points (9-18 months).
31
Local Government Association
Local Government House
Smith Square
London SW1P 3HZ
Telephone 020 7664 3000
Fax 020 7664 3030
Email [email protected]
www.local.gov.uk
© Local Government Association, January 2012
For a copy in Braille, larger print or audio,
please contact us on 020 7664 3000.
We consider requests on an individual basis.
L11-613

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