Customer First is at the heart of Business Transformation for the people of Birmingham, helping the Council to provide world class standards of customer service.

Outcomes for Customer First Programme include

Approach

A new customer interaction process has been designed which is independent of individual services and channels so that it can be applied to any service within the Organisation. This means that a wide range of services can be delivered through a single point of access and customers get the same hight level of service and outcome regardless of the service channel they choose.

Customer insight capability has been introduced to develop a deep understanding of customers' needs and preferences, convert this into insight and use this insight to shape the way it designs and delivers services in the future.

Personalised customer relationship with the Council - creating a single customer account across all channels, consolidating the Council's knowledge of individual customers. This means that a customer can update his or her details in a single interaction. It enables the organisation to re-use the customer data when the customer applies for a new service, saving time and repetition for the customer.

Graded response model has been introduced with three staff response levels interacting with customers: 1st Response, 2nd Response and Specialist Response. This will enable the staff with the right skill set to be matched to the complexity of each customer's enquiry
End-to-end view of service delivery will be available. Using the reference number provided, customers can contact the organisation (including via self service channels) to view the status of their interaction. This will also enable the organisation to actively monitor its performance and drive excellence from the point of enquiry through to delivery of services.

Channel integration - all channels will work together by providing a choice to the customer of which channel(s) to use, and by making it possible to move seamlessly from one channel to another. For example customers will be able to start an interaction with the Contact Centre and complete it on the web.