The Resources and Corporate Performance Scrutiny Committee met to discuss improvements to citizen experience and to review the committee's work programme for the coming year. The committee noted the report on citizen experience, which detailed improvements made and challenges remaining in the council's customer service operations. The committee also agreed to add items to its work programme, including Contact Camden and communications, and debt and financial resilience.

Improving Citizen Experience

The committee reviewed a report on improving citizen experience, which outlined the council's vision to become a more relational organisation. The report highlighted the work of Contact Camden, which handles over half a million citizen interactions per year, in championing citizen experience excellence within the council.

Challenges Faced

The report noted several challenges in customer service delivery:

• Performance imbalances: Prior to May 2024, services in Contact Camden were grouped by type, leading to strong performance within small teams dealing with transactional queries, but worsening performance for teams dealing with more complex queries, such as housing.
• Changing nature of demand: Post-Covid, the emerging cost of living crisis meant services had to swiftly pivot to providing support to residents needing help with financial pressures.
• Aging telephony system: The existing system, introduced in 2011, was becoming unstable and limited the council's ability to provide wider channel choice.

Transformation of Customer Experience

The report detailed several steps taken to transform customer experience:

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system: The introduction of the CRM opened the door to more connected customer journeys, allowing Customer Relationship Officers (CROs) to look back across the contact history of a resident to better inform their conversation.
• New target operating model: Introduced in May 2024, the new model configured the service to address citizen need, rather than arbitrarily by service, delivering a new capability to address complex demand whilst also tackling the issue of overspecialised teams and unbalanced performance.
• Omnichannel platform: Also introduced in May 2024, the new omnichannel platform, Liberty Converse, allows staff to handle interactions dynamically across channels to improve experience and productivity.
• Citizen Experience Framework: Contact Camden worked with Service Design colleagues to design and implement the Citizen Experience Framework, a toolkit through which to assess and improve citizen experience within services.

Citizen Experience Today

The report noted that overall contact demand increased by 1% in 2024, but that this varied by service. Transactional services saw the biggest changes, which can be credited to channel shift. For example, parking permits demand decreased by 24% as customers are increasingly able to self-serve independently. On the other hand, council tax demand remained stable year on year.

The report also highlighted the success of the new relational working model, with examples of deeper, more holistic support being provided to citizens. One case study highlighted a gentleman who was unable to renew his Blue Badge¹ online, and the member of staff was able to support him to complete his renewal over the phone, refer him for support through the Sensory Needs team, and make him aware of other services such as Careline, Taxi Card and Occupational Therapy.

The report noted that Contact Camden has made significant improvements to the citizen experience through the shift to relational working, and that the new operating structure centres around this model. The report stated that since the change of operating model there have been many examples of deeper, more holistic support that has been provided to citizens.

The report also noted that citizen experience has been positively impacted by performance improvements resulting from the new target operating model. Year on year, there has been a decrease in the overall average time to answer within the contact centre of 18%. The percentage of calls that have been answered overall has risen by 14%.

Despite the internal changes Contact Camden has made to improve the experience of navigating our front door, Contact Camden continues to face some challenges in managing demand, particularly outward communication from services either by text or letter as this generates significant 'spike' of contact.

The report also noted that the main billing period from March to April each year sees the contact centre face annual performance challenges due to steeply increased demand as a result of the sending of council tax bills, benefit statements and rent statements.

The report highlighted improvements made leveraging the Liberty Converse system, including the implementation of the Auto-Attendant, which allows citizens to say the name of the service or individual they wish to speak to and will route the call appropriately.

The report also noted that one of the reasons for moving to the Liberty Converse system was to give citizens wider channel choice when contacting the council, and that in early 2025 the service launched the webchat channel as a pilot for the Rents and Leaseholders services.

The report stated that another channel available to our citizens is the provision of face to face services at 5 Pancras Square.

The report concluded by noting that Camden's overall CSAT² score for Contact Camden improved by 14% year on year, a positive indicator of the success of our new operating structure and technological changes.

Future of Citizen Experience

The report stated that the next significant development for citizen experience in Camden is the implementation of the Liberty Converse CX platform, a next generation system, providing the service with access to AI enhanced journeys which span voice and digital communications.

Work Programme 2025/26

The committee considered its work programme for 2025/26 and was asked to propose any amendments. The committee agreed to add the following to the work programme:

• Contact Camden and communications
• Debt and financial resilience

The committee also noted the action Resources and Corporate Performance Action Tracker, which is Appendix B to the work programme report.