Sheila Apicella

has for many years worked in Direct, database and digital

local government, primarily in
customer services and then with
standards to enable the electronic
marketing practice in the
transfer of data to improve those
services to the citizen. For the
government sector: Black hole
past 3 years she has worked as
part of the esd-toolkit project
or parallel universe?
team, where she has ventured into
customer segmentation in Local Sheila Apicella and Nic Streatfeild
Government to shape the way in Received: 5th November 2009
which services are delivered more
efficiently.
Nic Streatfeild
is recognised as a leading Abstract
exponent and facilitator of This paper contributes to the discussion of whether direct, data
e-government. After graduation, and digital marking practice is as relevant to the public sector as
he joined the Ericsson Graduate
it undoubtedly is to the commercial sector, albeit in support of
Training programme, before
moving to Cable & Wireless. somewhat different objectives. It examines two specific areas of
In 1996, on his return to the UK data and analytic innovation to illustrate how local authorities are
after working in government succeeding in achieving cost reductions and in improving
sectors for Cable & Wireless in customer satisfaction levels by migrating specific population
Australia, he became one of the
founders of Rutland On Line,
segments to more appropriate contact channels. Despite their
then one of the country’s first monopoly status for the supply of certain services, this paper
community websites. Today, argues that innovations in the way customer satisfaction is
rol provides services to local gathered, particularly for digital channels, can be used to identify
authorities throughout the country.
improvements in service quality in conditions where competitive
markets do not apply. This paper concludes that because they are
non-competing, local authorities operate in a culture in which
data relating to population segments, services and channels used,
and on customer satisfaction, can only be used to achieve
significant improvements in effectiveness where comparable
information is pooled and accessed for benchmarking purposes.
Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice (2010) 11, 302–316.
Keywords: channel migration, cost
doi:10.1057/dddmp.2009.42
reduction, customer satisfaction,
data sharing, geodemographics,
public sector

Context
Sheila Apicella The practice of what is currently described as ‘direct, data and digital’
Esd Ltd marketing is commonly assumed to be a set of activities that helps
Bon Marché Centre
sustain the effectiveness of commercial and not-for-profit organizations.
Ferndale Road
London, SW9 8BJ, UK Evolving originally in the 1960s in catalogue mail order companies
Tel: + 44 0 7769 692989 (such as Great Universal Stores), direct sales organizations (such as
E-mail: [email protected]
Reader’s Digest) and financial services companies (such as American
Nic Streatfield Express), this practice has subsequently extended through virtually all
rol Solutions Ltd
ROL House, Long Row, Oakham
vertical market sectors in the commercial sector, so that today it plays
Rutland, LE15 6LN, UK a central role in the operation of leisure, retail, automotive and even
Tel: + 44 1572 756565 fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) manufacturing organizations.
Fax: + 44 1572 756560
E-mail: [email protected]
By contrast there is little evidence to support the proposition that
Http: www.govmetric.com such practices are relevant to the public sector. Public sector employees

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www.palgrave-journals.com/dddmp/
 Direct, database and digital marketing practice in the government sector

tend as a rule not to be attracted by the Institute of Direct Marketing’s

(IDM’s) training programmes. Public sector applications tend not to
feature in the IDM’s course material. This journal covers very few
case studies from the public sector.
Are techniques Should it therefore be concluded that the public sector, by its very
relevant to the public nature as a ‘universal’ provider, is not a suitable environment for the
sector? application of direct, data and digital marketing practice – a ‘black
hole’? Or is the public sector just a late adopter of these techniques? Or
are these techniques already used in the public sector but, because they
are described using different terminology such as ‘Social Marketing’,
do private sector practitioners fail to recognize the transferability of
skills and techniques with their public sector counterparts whom they
can easily treat as living in a ‘parallel universe’?
The purpose of this paper is to support the contention that there is
nothing inherent in the culture or environment of public sector
organizations that renders direct, data or digital marketing inappropriate
for reaching their objectives; that the sector may have been a late
adopter of some of these techniques but is now a serious user of
them; and that there are already examples of innovative practice in
government that deserve to be brought to the attention of practitioners
in the commercial sector.
Key trends in public Even to the most casual reader of the national press it is evident that
policy: there are a number of trends in how Britain is governed that have a
bearing on the use of data and targeting in the government sector.

Shift from universal to 1. As a result of pressures to restrict increases in the overall level of
means tested provision taxation and in the overall level of public expenditure, successive gov-
ernments have subjected an increasing proportion of service delivery
users to various forms of means testing. The application of means test-
ing necessarily requires service providers to collect far more informa-
tion about service users than if services were provided on a universal
basis.
League tables 2. Believing that ‘market’ pressures improve the standard of service
delivery, government strategy in sectors that are difficult to privatize,
such as health and education, increasingly relies on the publication
and dissemination of performance statistics, for example league tables
of schools, hospitals and police forces, the compilation of which
requires service users to provide detailed information about their age,
gender, ethnicity, occupational status and so forth.
Identification of 3. Government spends increasing resources on ‘surveillance’ systems the
populations ‘at risk’ object of which is to identify and punish citizens who in some way or
other fail to abide by accepted rules.
Resources are therefore allocated to the identification of citizens
posing the highest risk of, for example, engaging in terrorist activity,
avoiding payment of TV licence fees, not declaring sources of income
on benefit forms, not declaring income to HM Revenue and Customs,
committing paedophile acts, avoiding registration in their capacity as
landlords, traders, etc. Each of these campaigns requires not just the
collection of raw information, but also the integration of data from

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 Apicella and Streatfeild

diverse sources, in some cases including CCTV and number plate

recognition systems, and the development of risk models that enable
resources to be prioritized for cases representing the highest levels of
risk. Each component of these systems bears a resemblance to stages
in the private sector whereby communications are focussed on clients
who, on the basis of previous behaviour, appear to represent best
prospects taking into account the trade-off of potential revenues and
likely servicing costs and bad debts.
Saving money 4. In a number of sectors, the delivery of health and policing services
through preventative being good examples, government recognises that the effectiveness
campaigns of service outcomes can be significantly improved by encouraging
service users to respond to preventative measures. This may involve
encouragement to attend a diabetes screening centre or to improve the
locks on doors of privately rented properties. Where investment in
communicating these campaigns is justified by a high level of sub-
sequent savings in delivery costs (treating the diabetes, attending the
scene of a burglary), it benefits both likely victims and the general
taxpayer if analytical techniques can harness data in such a way as to
target preventative communications campaigns at those individuals
where return on investment is likely to be highest.
Evidence based policy 5. In what has arguably become a ‘post-ideological’ age, government
increasingly focuses on ‘what works’, and demands evidence from
trials and tests to justify investment. To reduce the risk of investing
in initiatives that ‘do not work’, government has become increas-
ingly willing to seek advice from consultants, many of whom have
extensive experience in the private sector. Where civil servants were
once prejudiced against making use of techniques employed in the
commercial sector, it could be argued that the evidence that there is a
precedent of the use of a technique in the private sector now increases
the likelihood that it will be adopted if included as a policy recom-
mendation.

Understanding These increases in data availability; in systems (analogous to

communications Customer Relationship Management [CRM] systems) such as the
channel preferences National Child Protection Register that link data from different sources;
in risk-based models; and in demands for greater cost effectiveness
coincide with an increased recognition of the potential role of new
contact channels to deliver a means of both meeting service user
preferences and delivering efficiency savings. Just as in the private
sector, public service providers recognize that different service users
have very different levels of access to and confidence in the use of
different channels.1 The key to achieving these efficiency savings is the
ability to predict the communications channels that are likely to be the
most appropriate for reaching individual users of each of the different
services government delivers.
Within the private sector, a key driver of CRM and other tools
has been the desire to deliver a comprehensive view of the customer,
taking into account all the different products and services that he or she
may have purchased. CRM was and still is seen as a tool that enables

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 Direct, database and digital marketing practice in the government sector

organizations to become more effective in co-ordinating sales across

what were previously multiple product or departmental ‘silos’.
Extensive service The demand for and benefits of a 360-degree view of the service
portfolios user is even more relevant to local authorities than it is to private
companies. The number of clients of an individual local authority may
seem relatively small to a national retailer. However, the range of
different services that it delivers is arguably far more variegated than
that offered by even the most diversified financial services or retail
group.2
Multiple points of Likewise, the different types of environment and physical location at
customer contact which the citizen makes use of local authority services — at a school,
park, civic amenity site, car park, swimming pool, housing advice
centre — are far more diverse than the types of physical location at
which the citizen interacts with a bank — at a branch, at an ATM.
The number of contact channels is likely to be equally diverse.
In addition, just as in his or her dealings with a private organization,
the citizen is equally demanding that the government agencies with
which he or she interfaces should, where relevant, be ‘joined up’
in terms of the view of the citizen that they hold. His or her time
should not be needlessly wasted through being transferred from one
operational department to another. In the public sector, forming a
common view of the citizen is therefore as much in the interest of
the service provider and the user as it is in that of the private sector.
Key differences Though it is possible to identify many similarities, it is obvious that
between private and there are a number of key differences of emphasis between operational
public sectors environments in the two sectors.
In the private sector, although many operators adopt a multi-channel
strategy to service clients, customers who have a particular preference
for using a particular channel normally have the option to open an
account with a supplier specializing in delivering through a specific
channel. Local authorities, by virtue of being sole suppliers of
specific services, need to take a more proactive role in researching
the relative strength of their service proposition via different channels.
This is because for many services, such as housing repairs or social
services, they cannot rely on client defection rates as a proxy for
Unequal costs of using customer satisfaction as would be the case for a commercial
different channels organization.
Additionally, because the revenue attaching to the delivery of a
specific service is often set according to a formula by central
government, local authorities appear to focus more than the private
sector on the costs associated with servicing clients in different
segments and via different channels, and rather less on differences
in revenues generated. It could be argued that a greater focus on the
analysis of the relationship between cost and market segments could
contribute significantly to the profitability of private sector organizations.
A third key difference is that whereas in the private sector
customer defection to a competing supplier can often be considered
a consequence of customer dissatisfaction, for a local authority the
level of satisfaction is a service objective in its own right, not as a

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 Apicella and Streatfeild

proxy for lost revenue. Therefore, the measurement of customer

satisfaction is a more critical indicator of whether a service is
delivered well or badly.
Sharing of evidence of The monopoly status of the local authority as a local service
‘what works’ provider does make it much easier for local authorities to make use of
shared information services that enable contributing organisations to
make comparisons between their own performance and that of others
providing similar services through similar channels.

The drive towards ‘customer insight’

Although customer profiling or segmentation has been used in the
private sector for over 30 years, it is only since 1997 that government
and local government have started to embrace the concept and
understand its relevance to enabling resources to be targeted at those
who are most in need of particular services.
Practice influenced The recommendations from the local government White
by key reports Paper ‘Strong & Prosperous Communities’3 see reference place
emphasis on the citizen. This and the Lyons Report’s concept of
‘place shaping’4 — the idea that communities should not be subjected
to ‘one-size-fits-all’ policies — and the Varney5 Report’s advocacy of
‘citizen insight’ all support an increasing emphasis on citizen-centred
service delivery.
Profiling In government, unlike the private sector, a key value of
profiling and analysis is the ability that it can provide to identify
aspects of the delivery of particular services that perform
comparatively well or comparatively poorly in comparison with
other service providers serving other geographic areas. Are response
rates to public health campaigns to encourage measles, mumps and
rubella (MMR) take-up higher or lower than in comparator authorities?
Accessing equivalent comparator information, for example the
proportion of respondents to a credit card mailing who are declined
at the credit application stage, is less easy for commercial marketers.
Often they will have to rely on the experience of consulting organizations
to provide unofficial benchmarks as a result of their work with other
players in the industry.

The fundamental requirement for consistent activity

and service code classification
Consistent coding Before segmentation data can be used to facilitate comparisons with
of service categories other local authorities, it is of course necessary to deploy a common
a pre-requisite for set of definitions to categorize in detail the different services that local
benchmarking authorities deliver to their clients. The esd-toolkit is the result of an
investment that central government recognized as being necessary if
benchmark comparison of this type was to prove reliable. As a result
of this investment a common set of codable categories has emerged
over the past 5 years that has now been adopted by local authorities
across England and Scotland to give a common language base when
referring to services, channels and costs. This categorization forms the

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 Direct, database and digital marketing practice in the government sector

basis for the Local Government Services List (LGSL).6 This

categorization clearly improves the reliability of returns requested by
central government, as well as benchmark comparisons between
authorities.
In order to facilitate benchmark comparisons, the esd-toolkit has
extended its remit so as to enable participating local authorities to share
access to the effectiveness of their Social Marketing campaigns, as
well as their overall performance. The performance of each of the
50 participating authorities in respect of each detailed service and
through each channel (web, phone, face-to-face etc) has been
established by uploading data directly from that local authority’s
CRM system or from records of users of individual services.

Benchmarking as a performance management tool

This service allows the local authority, for example, to identify the
proportion of Council Tax payers who have been successfully
persuaded to make payments via direct debit or the proportion of
housing benefit enquiries that are resolved over the telephone as against
visits to local authority advice centres. This information clearly
provides benefits to participating local authorities regarding channels
they could be using to a greater extent than they currently are for
delivering specific services and hence identifying particular areas where
cost savings could most easily be introduced.
‘Nearest neighbour’ The reporting systems associated with the esd-toolkit encourage local
analysis authorities not just to benchmark their own performance against the
national average, but to compare themselves with ‘nearest neighbour’
analogues, that is, authorities whose population profile is most similar
to their own.
Shared database of To address the fact that the demographic composition of most local
performance statistics authorities is very different one from another, and to identify in more
detail the individual service users who are most likely to respond to
efforts to change their channel usage (and indeed to identify service
users where this should not be an objective), the esd-toolkit7
encourages participating authorities to collect service user postcodes
and to share information on the geographic profile of users by
different channel/service combination, as well as costs by
geodemographic type.

Sharing information on activity and

communications costs
Currently, a major focus of the development of the esd-toolkit
programme is to improve the accuracy with which information on costs
can be integrated within the system. By undertaking a detailed audit
of the costs per contact for different service delivery functions via
specific communications channels, participating local authorities will
increasingly be able to share information on the return on investment
in terms of cost savings from transferring given numbers of
transactions and service enquiries from one channel to another.

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 Apicella and Streatfeild

Activity based costing A more detailed ‘Activity Based Costing’ methodology is now also
being trialled that will give a cost breakdown for each part of a service
so that costs can be modularized to build up a picture of service
delivery, demand, latent demand and performance.

Informing customer access and channel strategies

12 million transactions To date, the esd-toolkit has gathered information on over 12 m
transactions, cross-referenced against the categories on the LGSL.
Each participating local authority can view the customer breakdown
for each service, the channel split and the propensity of customers
to switch channels. When supplemented by the cost information,
this informs the development of a customer access and channel
strategy.
Early adopters of new Clearly there is a drive among most local authorities to shift
transaction channels customers to cheaper channels. However, it is also worth noting the
experience of one of the participating local authorities, the
geodemographic profile of whose residents does not favour the
construction of an all-singing-all-dancing website and is unlikely to be
influenced by it. Certainly where the geodemographic profile indicates
large numbers of residents in groups and types that would be willing to
shift channel, local authorities have been successful in implementing a
change programme. For example, where overlaid national aggregated
data showed many residents living in geodemographic groups and types
that had already adopted telephone banking, successful campaigns have
seen increased take-up of direct debits, resulting both in operational
savings and improved debt recovery.
Customer profiling is proving most successful when it is embedded
in the organizational culture. It not only informs service delivery,
customer access and equalities impact assessments, but also
performance management when linked via the services list to the
National Indicators that local authorities are required to report against
as a measure of their effectiveness.
Who recycles? For example, recognizing that a citizen’s time is valuable, a local
authority can profile contacts that could have been avoided if the initial
information had been clearer or the service had not failed in some way.
This figure, a requirement of National Indicator 14, can be split out in
esd-toolkit so that service failure can be improved upon and precious
resources directed to those who need it most. Performance figures can
also be put into context. For example, a local authority that has a large
number of residents who are unlikely to recycle can use profile data to
discover that it is more difficult for it to achieve recycling targets than
for a local authority that has geodemographic groups and types more
willing to participate in creating a green environment. Local authorities
can also look up their demographic near neighbours to help them have
a view on how others with similar citizen makeup are performing and
delivering against the same targets (Figure 1).
The fact that many authorities are using the esd-toolkit’s techniques
means that there is a huge potential for benchmarking.

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 Direct, database and digital marketing practice in the government sector

Figure 1: Map showing rural local authorities in England and Wales most similar in geodemographic
make-up to the district of Eden

‘Nuggets’ that have been discovered using this approach include:

Examples of insights • elderly customers were applying for and being issued disabled bus
passes rather than the elderly person’s pass (cost saving potential);
• there was a high take-up of ‘freebees’ from affluent groups (bus
passes, loft insulation, heating allowance, free prescriptions, leisure
facilities etc)/low take-up from those who have greater need;
• low library usage was to be expected from certain groups, but there
were some surprises: where there was a high proportion of affluent
groups, those who would not usually use libraries were taking up the
service at a higher rate than the national average;
• in some areas there were high levels of face-to-face transactions or
post contact where the profile indicated that the customer would be
happy to use other (lower-cost) channels. This provided an
opportunity for channel-change to less resource-hungry options
without reducing customer satisfaction;
• rural communities were often ‘missed out’ as assumptions were made
about affluent areas; drilling down into rural communities showed
small pockets of deprivation; and
• profiling enabled some local authorities to understand why they were
experiencing low take-up of online services. They had above the
national average of groups and types who would be unlikely to use
web. An action plan of how these groups might be supported could be
drawn up along with a marketing plan.

Benefits and limitations of channel migration strategies

Migrating customers to lower-cost access channels is an understandably
appealing proposition for organizations seeking to achieve significant
cost savings. However, if local councils are indiscriminate in their
drive to move citizens to self-serve, they run the risk of missing

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 Apicella and Streatfeild

opportunities to deliver a personalized service that may, in the long

Interconnectedness of run, be more cost effective.
services Just as is the case with high street banks, local authorities recognize
that customer enquiries that are dealt with face-to-face — either in
council offices or in the home — present officers with an opening to
use their knowledge and experience to make a comprehensive
assessment of the customer’s needs. A simple enquiry about housing
benefits might lead to a discussion about free school meals, funded
childcare options, and ultimately to assistance with employment or
training. This opportunity is even greater in an environment where
different services providers work closely together, irrespective of the
initial point of contact.
Nevertheless, appropriate channel migration can enable local
authorities to save money or to free up resources, which can then be
redeployed to more proactive work with those citizens most in need of
facilitated access to services.
Waste and recycling An example of this can be found at South Tyneside District Council.
in South Tyneside With pressure on key services rising as a result of the economic
downturn, the council embarked on a project to migrate non-critical
waste and recycling services to the web. Guided by customer insight
information, the council redeveloped its online information and
transactional services, and improved navigation and search on the
Shifting enquiries website.
from contact centres The Council used GovMetric, a service that captures customer
to the web feedback and interaction levels at the point of experience across all the
primary access channels, to measure the impact of these improvements.
The GovMetric data revealed that these improvements alone were not
delivering the anticipated drop in calls to the contact centre. To address
this, the council embarked on a 6-month awareness campaign, and
within 1 month GovMetric showed that the number of customers using
this part of the website to self-serve had increased from just 203 in
October 2008 to 2,809 in November 2008. This increase persisted
during the following months, during which time GovMetric also
recorded a steady drop in the number of customers calling the contact
centre with waste and recycling enquiries.
Using information on enquiry costs per channel, the Council
calculated that this channel shift brought the estimated overall average
per-transaction cost in this service area down from £2.97 in November
2008 to £1.25 in April 2009 — a drop of 58 per cent. It also freed up
approximately 0.25–0.5 full-time equivalent employees per annum in
the contact centre, which provided resources that could be used in
dealing with the increase in demand for critical services.

The value of real-time customer satisfaction data as an

indicator of service effectiveness
Citizen satisfaction as Government organizations are no less concerned at the level of user
a target satisfaction with their services than are organizations in the private
sector. Over the past decade, customer satisfaction has become
increasingly prominent in the way that central government measures

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the performance of local government. In 2000, the first Best Value

General Survey required all councils in the country to find out how
satisfied local people were with the services that the council provided.
This survey was repeated every 3 years until April 2008, when best
value performance indication (BVPI) was replaced with a single
National Indicator Set (NIS).
The NIS comprises 198 National Indicators, including 25 indicators
that are informed by citizens’ views and perspectives. Eighteen of
these are determined by measuring citizens’ views and perspectives
collected through a single Place Survey that is administered by all local
authorities every 2 years. However, the Department of Communities
and Local Government (CLG) recognizes that local authorities will
also continue to rely on their own methods of seeking direct feedback
on services.
From feedback Until relatively recently, measuring customer satisfaction with local
forms to automated authorities has been synonymous with feedback forms and customer
measurement systems surveys. A sample of customers would be selected to take part in a
detailed survey, which would typically take place in the weeks or
months following the customer’s interaction with the organization.
Designing and administering effective surveys can be a costly process,
and by the time the results are available to the organization they may
already be out of date. Furthermore, because they tend to be run
periodically, traditional surveys may fail to register the impact of
specific organizational changes and unanticipated events. As a result of
the time delay between the customer’s contact with the organization and
the survey, the experience is no longer fresh in the customer’s mind.
As a result, local authorities are increasingly shifting towards
feedback methods that continuously capture customer feedback at the
point of experience. Techniques pioneered by GovMetric capture
customer feedback in real time at the point of service experience across
organizations’ primary access channels — face-to-face, telephone and
web. Unlike traditional sampled surveys, the service is made available
to every customer via self-service interfaces such as kiosks, telephone
interactive voice response (IVR) systems and web-based forms, and
can also be extended to capture feedback relating to email and postal
correspondence.
The value of shared In a manner not dissimilar to the esd-toolkit, GovMetric operates a
information systems shared information service whereby it receives and processes data
gathered by participating organizations relating to the total volume of
customer interactions recorded by those organizations.

Using customer satisfaction data to refine channel

Content of feedback strategy
on satisfaction The GovMetric question set is intentionally very short, meaning that
it typically takes less than 1 minute for a customer to leave feedback.
Customers rate their experience of the service that they received from
the organization using the three GovMetric Smileys, corresponding to a
Good, Average or Poor rating. Customers are also able to select one of
four reasons for the rating selected. Where the interface device allows,

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 Apicella and Streatfeild

customers are also invited to leave free-text comments, and may also
be asked supplementary questions, enabling participant organizations to
collect data such as ethnicity relevant to the recording of information
on diversity.
Interaction volumes for the face-to-face and telephone channels are
typically measured and recorded by the organization using existing
processes and systems, for example CRM, tick sheets etc. This data is
then sent to GovMetric at scheduled intervals. Different organizations
may have different principles for defining and measuring customer
interactions, and not all customer interactions may be recorded by all
organizations. The quality of the information could not be assured were
it not for the fact that participants code interactions according to the
Local Government Supplier List.
Interaction volumes for the web channel are calculated by GovMetric
by applying the International Federation of Audit Bureaux of Circulation
(IFABC) definition of a web visit8 to each organization’s web logs.
Consistently coded Each customer rating or interaction is assigned to one of the eight
service categories pre-defined service categories that are measured by that organization.
If the rating or interaction cannot be assigned to one of these
categories, it is assigned to either the ‘Other Service’ category or
the ‘Not a Service’ category.
Customer ratings across participating organizations are averaged
to obtain an overall measure of satisfaction for each unique channel-
service pair, or ‘segment’, for example Web-Benefits. A minimum
number of feedback responses must have been collected by each
organization in order to be included in this measure.
Telephone contact Data gathered by GovMetric from approximately 50 local authorities
results in highest in England and Wales indicate that customer satisfaction is consistently
satisfaction levels highest on the telephone channel, scoring an average of 0.92.9 The
web channel has historically been the poorest-performing channel with
regard to customer satisfaction, but it is interesting to note that since the
beginning of 2009, customer satisfaction with online services provided
by participants has been steadily increasing, and currently matches that of
the face-to-face channel at around 0.36. This reflects the work undertaken
by many participating authorities in making improvements to their web
Streets and parking channels as a result of the customer feedback gathered by GovMetric.
services about which Across the different service areas, customers are typically seen to
the citizen is least be least satisfied with streets and parking services, although this is probably
satisfied not surprising given that a large percentage of these enquiries will relate to
the payment of parking fines. Of more concern is the relatively low level
of satisfaction with housing services, backing up anecdotal evidence that
many councils are struggling to meet tenant expectations with regard to
waiting times for social housing and response times for repairs.
On the other hand, waste and recycling and council tax typically
achieve higher than average overall satisfaction levels. The effort
put in by many of the participating councils in improving the online
information for these services is a major contributory factor; for
example, in May 2009, 57 per cent of the respondents that commented
on the ease of finding information about waste and recycling online

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rated this factor as ‘Good’, compared to only 35 per cent of those

commenting on housing services. This emphasizes the importance of an
effective online service in raising overall customer satisfaction levels.

Using real-time feedback to diagnose sources of

dissatisfaction
Drivers of customer The most fundamental factors that affect customer satisfaction are
satisfaction universal — staff knowledge and friendliness, the speed with which a
customer’s enquiry is dealt with, and the effectiveness of any actions
taken to deliver an outcome or solve a problem. Research has identified
the following five key drivers of customer satisfaction with public
services10:

Delivery — The service delivers the outcome it promised and manages

to deal with any problems that may arise;
Timeliness — The service responds immediately to the initial customer
contact and deals with the issue at the heart of it quickly and without
passing it on between staff;
Professionalism — Staff are competent and treat customers fairly;
Information — The information given out to customers is accurate and
comprehensive, and they are kept informed about progress; and
Staff attitude — Staff are friendly, polite and sympathetic to customer
needs.

Drivers depend an The relative importance of these drivers may vary depending on the
service and channel service or channel, and individual services or customer segments may
have additional specific drivers. Both the drivers and their relative
importance can be fine-tuned by surveying customers directly, or
through reviewing customer feedback.
Any customer survey or feedback service should reflect these
drivers. For example, the GovMetric question set, although
intentionally very short, invites customers to select one of four reasons
for the rating given, which broadly align to the drivers set out above.
This ensures that customers are able to give feedback about the factors
that are most likely to be important to them.
Translating feedback But how can local authorities translate this feedback into actual
into service service improvement? It does not have to be complicated. Customer
improvement service champions should make sure that a review of the latest
customer satisfaction data is a standard item on the agenda of
team meetings, and the feedback should be discussed openly.
Most importantly, customer service advisors should be asked for ideas
on how to tackle customer issues.
Key findings and any subsequent actions that are proposed or
underway should be circulated across the wider organisation, and
may include suggestions for how specific service areas could make
improvements. The customer services champion should make sure that
someone takes ownership for every action, and should oversee its
completion. If a continuous feedback service is in place, it will be easy
to monitor the impact of any changes made.

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 Apicella and Streatfeild

A powerful opportunity to improve reputation, and one that is often

missed, is the chance to feed back to customers how their feedback is
being used to deliver change.
Display the results Display the results in your offices. This could be in the form of
posters, flyers or information on an LCD screen displayed in reception.
It is essential that this includes some specific examples of the action
taken as a direct result of customer feedback. Updating it punctually
is absolutely vital — if it is allowed to become out of date then
customers will lose confidence that their feedback is being listened to,
and it can be difficult to win this confidence back. The frequency of
updates is less important than the data being current — it is better to
have a high-quality quarterly update than a brief weekly update that is
several weeks out of date.
Publish the results Similar information should be published online, paying particular
attention to the changes that have been made to the website, which will
be of particular interest to this group of customers. Again, it is crucial
that this is kept up to date.

Case examples of the use of real-time customer

satisfaction data
Heavy snowfall in An example of the benefits of having a robust feedback system in place,
Milton Keynes and reacting quickly to customer feedback, can be found in the way
Milton Keynes Council handled the heavy snowfalls in February 2009.
The council was unprepared for the scale of the surge in website traffic,
and the site failed on the first day of snow. The web team responded
immediately, and by 9 am the team had removed unnecessary content
and processes and successfully restored the service, enabling head
teachers to log on to the website and register their schools as closed.
The following morning, members of the team sat down to review the
customer feedback captured by GovMetric on the previous day. Large
numbers of people were leaving negative feedback to say that the
school closures information was confusing, because it was not clear
whether the information was up to date.
Response to feedback As a result, the web team quickly amended the school closures page
to incorporate ‘last updated’ information, and sent out reminders to
head teachers advising them that they must list any changes to their
schools’ status promptly on the website.
On Wednesday, the council continued with its rapid response to
customer feedback by posting improved gritting maps on the website,
and also by publishing guidance information to aid school heads when
making a decision on closure.
Shift in satisfaction By Thursday, the GovMetric data was showing a clear improvement
resulting from change in customer satisfaction from citizens seeking information about
council services during the crisis. That morning, the council received
28 customer comments relating to the school closures page, and an
impressive 26 of these customers had rated the information as ‘Good’,
the highest rating that can be given.
Julie-Ann Hammond, Web Content Manager at Milton Keynes
Council, spoke about the vital role that customer feedback played

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 Direct, database and digital marketing practice in the government sector

during the crisis, which saw levels of customer demand for council
information remain high until well into the following week. ‘Real time
customer feedback enabled us to respond immediately during a period
when the Council’s resources, across a range of services, were put
under severe pressure by the extreme weather conditions’.
Responding to ‘The majority came through the council’s website at www.milton-
a crisis keynes.gov.uk, and in total we must have received almost 700 pieces
of feedback during the week of bad weather, on topics ranging from
school closures to bus services, recycling and waste collections’.
‘We found was that as the snow crisis developed, we were able to
quickly and effectively modify our council web pages in direct
response to what our residents told us, delivering a measurable
improvement in customer satisfaction, despite the adverse conditions’.

The pooling of satisfaction data and the mechanics and

benefits of benchmarking
The ability to benchmark customer satisfaction data within the local
government sector offers individual councils a context in which to
understand their current performance, and valuable input into the
process of setting meaningful targets and understanding trends.
50 councils now To achieve a customer satisfaction benchmark, the data on which it
standardising data is based must be standardized, ideally at the point of capture. The
GovMetric service has made significant progress towards this goal by
achieving a standardized set of services, channels and drivers that has
been adopted by over 50 councils. Arriving at this standardized list
was a ‘grassroots’ process that involved detailed consultation with
practitioners, with the goal of focusing on service improvement, as
opposed to a top-down measurement service.
Consistency As well as a standardized question set, there must also be
consistency in the way that the service is implemented in individual
organizations, from the number of customers using the kiosks to the
way in which customers are asked for feedback on the telephone. One
of the roles of the GovMetric user group is to monitor how the service
is being used and, where possible, to align this across the group.

Establishing the appropriateness of ‘one-size-fits-all’

Advice of Audit strategies
Commission New ways of capturing, measuring and sharing customer satisfaction data
certainly present an opportunity for local government to better understand
the individual needs of its citizens and communities. However, the
majority of councils have yet to fulfil the potential of customer insight,
and work remains to be done in how councils make use of the wealth of
intelligence now available to them. In its recent report Is there something
I should know? the Audit Commission highlights that most councils do
not use their data to inform key decisions, and are missing chances to
improve services and cut costs as a result.
Nevertheless, looking at the results from GovMetric it is clear that,
for now at least, a multi-channel approach is essential if the goal is to

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 Apicella and Streatfeild

deliver services that satisfy individual citizens. Examining the feedback

for a single webpage will often reveal polarized opinions from different
customer groups. A webpage that cites nothing but a contact telephone
number will be welcomed by one customer, while frustrating a web-
savvy citizen who expects to self-serve. Conversely, the very name
‘e-services’ may bewilder someone who has been used to paying their
council tax bill every month at the cashier’s desk.

Conclusions
Many key similarities Our conclusion it that the issues that underlie the drive to direct,
between public and data and digital marketing in the commercial sector are not dissimilar
commercial sectors to those that drive innovation in local government. These include the
demand for a joined up view of the customer/citizen; the understanding
of population segments for which different communications strategies
are appropriate; the demand of users for personalization and for a
choice of contact and transaction channels; and the desire of suppliers
to migrate service users to lower-cost channels where appropriate.
Whereas in a competitive market environment client retention and
profitability are the key indicators of the success of such strategies in
local government, a combination of cost efficiency compared with
other authorities with a similar population profile and measures of
citizen satisfaction are likely to prove more effective measures for
gauging success or failure than the ballot box.
Although it would appear that local government benefits uniquely
from its opportunity to share information via pooled databases, it
would probably be a mistake to suppose that operators in the
commercial sector do not find other methods of benchmarking their
effectiveness against that of their competitors. However, access to
benchmark data may offer an important motivation for continuous
service improvement in a sector where this cannot be achieved through
the normal play of market forces.

References
1. Transformational Government, available at http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/pbr06_varney_
review.pdf.
2. Experian. (2006) ‘Putting citizens at the heart of government, London.
3. http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/localgovernment/strongprosperous.
4. http://www.lyonsinquiry.org.uk/.
5. Varney Review, available at http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/pbr06_varney_review.pdf.
6. Department of Communities and Local Government, available at http://www.bitc.org.uk/
programmes/programme_directory/regeneration/underserved_markets/.
7. esd-toolkit, available at http://www.esd.org.uk/esdtoolkit/.
8. VISIT — A series of one or more PAGE IMPRESSIONS, served to a valid BROWSER,
which ends when there is a gap of 30 minutes or more between successive PAGE
IMPRESSIONS for that BROWSER. See http://www.ifabc.org/for more information.
9. On a scale of − 1 to 1, based on data gathered by GovMetric in the period January 2009 – May 2009.
10. Public services.

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