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Getting things right first time, every time
The purpose of this Customer Insight report is to bring together the information collected about the customer experience of using Brighton & Hove City Council services in 2020/21.
This performance has been in the context of the Covid 19 pandemic.
By customer we mean any user of council services, whether voluntary or involuntary. This includes residents and visitors to the city, businesses, students, service users and their representatives.
This report presents what we currently know about our customer services. Our aim is to ensure we better understand the needs of all our customers, and to learn and grow consistently from the feedback we receive, in order to improve the customer experience.
1. Business planning and management
2. Risk management
3. Financial management
4. Customer insight
5. Modernisation programmes and projects
6. People management
7. Health and safety management
8. Safeguarding quality assurance
Customer Insight is one element of our Performance Management Framework that sets out how the council manages performance, to achieve our purpose as set out in the Corporate Plan.
Our vision of Getting things right first time, every time is the driving force behind our customer promise.
Initially developed in 2015, our promise sets out the standards and principles of how we deliver services to our customers, providing the council with a framework to monitor and measure our performance.
Our Customer Promise was refreshed in September 2019, to ensure that the services we deliver continue to be aligned to the needs of our customers, following engagement with customers through online and paper surveys and face to face interviews conducted in Customer Service Centres and Libraries across the city.
Customers were asked to identify what they valued most when interacting with council services.
They were asked that:
Of those engaged:
Of those surveyed:
In addition to the above information, we have reviewed feedback on our customer promise, provided by customers as part of the recent engagement, online customer satisfaction survey responses, customer complaints and compliments.
Our Customer Promise has been jointly developed, from these priorities, in collaboration with representatives from front line services.
The standards and principles within the promise do not only apply to staff who work directly with customers, but all staff who work for the council, including those in support services such as Human resources, IT & Digital, Finance, Business Operations, Health & Safety. This ensures a consistency of approach and provides staff who do deal directly with customers the appropriate infrastructure, tools and support to deliver the best customer experience.
Our Customer Experience Vision describes how we intend to deliver on the Customer Promise and has been similarly refreshed following customer feedback. These two documents are at the heart of our Customer Experience Strategy that was approved at the Policy & Resources Committee in December 2019.
We'll:
We'll:
We'll:
We check our performance through monitoring:
The results will be published through our Customer Insight Report annually.
We will:
We will:
We will:
We will:
We will:
We have listened to our customers and updated this promise using their suggestions and priorities.
September 2019
Services are available online, where possible and are easy to find.
Council Information systems are joined up appropriately to make it easier for customers.
It is clear to customers what the best way of contacting the council is, based on what they need.
Staff are skilled and confident in delivering customer service, including being able to resolve customer dissatisfaction quickly and fairly.
The customer Promise is checked regularly to make sure it includes what is important for customers.
All services are delivered to the standards set in the Customer Promise.
Customers are confident that all services keep The Customer Promise.
All services engage with everyone who may be affected before making changes.
Improving the customer experience is the top priority in everyone's day to day role.
Customers are asked what they think about the services they receive and their feedback is acted upon.
The council uses data and information to plan service improvements.
Services work together for the benefit of the customer.
Council resources are used to meet customer needs through all contact methods.
All services support each other positively to fulfil the Customer Promise.
All staff are able to offer basic advice, support or signposting to other council services and external support.
The council works with other public or private services, charities and community groups to resolve issues together.
How was the standard of customer service you received from the council team or service?
This graph shows the percentage of customers who found the level of service to be fairly or very good in 2020/21. It shows the overall level of satisfaction for the council is 54% for 2020/21. This is a decrease of 11% when compared to 2019/20.
How easy or difficult was it for you to access or use the council service or team?
This graph shows the percentage of customers who found council services fairly or very easy to access. It shows the overall ease of access for the council is 61% for 2020/21. This is a decrease of 5% when compared to 2019/20.
Results have been taken from the corporate Customer Experience Survey (from 2,661 respondents) carried out in March and April 2021 and combined, where possible, with surveys carried out by services or associated partners.
Results are only included where a significant number of responses were returned to provide a confident score. Data from 2019/20 has been adjusted to only include comparable results. Due to the varying methodologies used in collecting and compiling data, results shown can only be considered indicative of customer experience.
28% reduction in Stage 1 complaints
We received 1,140 Stage 1 complaints in 2020/21, compared to 1,588 in 2019/20.
Services who received the most complaints:
7% reduction in compliments received
We received 1,430 compliments received in 2020/2021.
Services with the largest increase in compliments:
0.3% increase
Escalation of complaints from Stage 1 to Stage 2 increased from 10.5% in 2019/20 to 10.8 % in 2020/21.
123 complaints were escalated to Stage 2.
19.5% of Stage 2 complaints were upheld An improvement of 5.8% when compared to 2019/20.
5% reduction
The number of Stage 1 complaints responded to within 10 working days has decreased, going from 69% in 2019/20 to 64% in 2020/21. A drop of 5% (726/1140).
Stage 1 complaints are responded to within 12 working days on average.
1% decrease
The Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman upheld 53% of complaints about Brighton & Hove City Council escalated to them in 2019/20, compared to 54% in 2018/19. An improvementof 1%
Similar authorities averaged 56% of complaints upheld by the ombudsman.
The council provided satisfactory remedies 33% before going to ombudsman which compares to an average of 11% for similar authorities.
4% reduction
The number of Stage 2 complaints responded to within 20 working days has reduced, going from 74% in 2019/20 to 70% in 2020/21.
A decline of 4% (86/123).
This graph shows the number of stage 1 complaints received by each service per year, from 2017/18 to 2020/21. It shows the overall number of stage 1 complaints received by the council has reduced by 28% when compared to 2019/20.
365,744 online forms received in 2020/21
Council Tax account for 38% of forms received with 127,296.
An average of 30,478 online forms per month.
151,322 phone calls received in 2020/21
Housing Repairs 28% (42,631 calls) and Parking 29% (43,139 calls) received the highest number of calls.
The council received 12,610 phone calls on average per month.
154,823 calls were made to council services not operating a live phone offer.
All high volume transactional services taking live phone calls answered within an average of 5 minutes 9 seconds.
Approximately 455,833 emails were received in 2019/20
Housing Management 109% (1,385 emails) and City Environment 66% (1,023 emails) saw the highest proportional increase in emails received.
Council Tax received the highest volume of emails with approximately 8,100 per month.
With the exception of Council Tax and Housing Needs: Homemove, high volume transactional services responded to the majority of emails within 10 working days meeting the Customer Promise.
Accessed by 3.5 million people
Top pages:
Over 13.5 million unique page views
Approximately 31,600 pieces of post received over the past year
An average of 2,650 pieces of post received per month.
This graph shows the proportion of customer contact by channel (online, phone, email, face to face and post). It shows that emails were the most frequent method of contact accounting for 41% of all council contact, and that 79% of all contact came through digital channels (online forms were the second most frequent with 38%).
These results are taken from responses to the satisfaction survey provided through the corporate consultation portal and do not include results from independent surveys carried out within services.
As such, the results presented as ‘average of all respondents’ will differ to the data presented in overall satisfaction data.
74% (1,878) of respondents to the satisfaction survey agreed to provide equalities data out of a total 2,543 responses.
All respondents (1,878) who provided equalities data were on average more satisfied; 54%, than the average of all respondents; 46% (2,543).
The 26% (665) of respondents who did not choose to provide equalities data scored significantly lower in satisfaction, 28%, than the average of all respondents and those who provided equalities data.
As part of this year’s customer satisfaction survey, customers were asked if they would like to feedback on their experience of using council services during the Covid-19 pandemic. 60% (1,518) of respondents to the satisfaction survey agreed to provide feedback.
97% (1,478) of the 1,518 respondents who provide feedback on services during the Covid-19 pandemic indicated they have contacted or used council services in the past 12 months.
Of the 1,478 respondents:
Slow, or no response to emails.
Unclear information on website.
Issues accessing account on council systems.
Website has too much writing.
Lack of clarity over next steps after online form submitted.
Long waiting times.
No phone line.
Unsure who to contact.
No one to contact when having issues with digital channels.
By customer we mean, any user of council services, voluntary or involuntary. This includes residents, visitors to the city, businesses, students, service users and their representatives.
Brighton & Hove’s population is estimated at 286,000.
The population registered to vote is 208,700.
130,000 Council Taxpayers.
31,800 children attending school.
16,400 receiving housing benefit.
11,550 total council owned dwellings.
11,300 Business rate payers.
624km of carriageway.
1,020km of footpaths.
12km of coastline.
98 parks and open spaces.
1,461,200 visits to libraries.
Over the past year, due to the restrictions in place to manage the pandemic, council teams have had to make significant changes to the way in which they deliver services.
Many new services have been started including:
Other services have had to change how they work and how they can be contacted.
All of these changes have happened very rapidly and were initially planned to be temporary, so as a result of this, we are conducting a review of the current provision, with a priority focus on accessibility of services, to ensure that no one is disadvantaged in accessing the council services that they need, be that through digital exclusion, finance, health, ethnicity or other protected characteristics.
The impacts of the pandemic have presented opportunities and also highlighted areas for improvement – it has helped demonstrate that many of our customers can access the services they need through digital channels, but also that there is a need for more robust and consistent support for those who can’t.
The Accessibility review has three phases, the first – to address any urgent gaps in accessibility will be completed by autumn 2021, with consideration given to those who aren’t able to access services online, and to make our telephone services easier to use.
In phase one, our priorities are:
Further phases will seek to address inconsistencies in the way that services are delivered, as well as considering more significant transformation of the structural organisation of service delivery.
Development of the Health and Adult Social Care (HASC) hub to support people to understand the range of support available and find the help they need, including improvement of our online forms if customers do need to contact us.
Using contact management system to help manage contact and referrals from residents and ensure these are quickly passed to the most appropriate team to respond to.
Focus on learning from complaints and customer feedback in new HASC monthly performance meetings to identify actions needed and monitoring of progress around these.
Digital improvements to online claim forms - staff to analyse and request changes from IT&D.
Continue to prioritise correspondence received every day with digital correspondence from customer prioritised over other work. Team is looking at possible new work streams, including backlog busting and increased automation of electronic data received from DWP to free staff up to focus on correspondence received from customer.
Actions to improve or develop the 'human' side of our interactions with customers; share and emphasise the compliments we get from customers, what is important to them, what makes a difference to them.
An online application process for application to purchase a grave space at Woodvale Natural Burial ground - in progress.
Working with the Digital communications team to improve our website and the customer journey.
Developing online applications for various memorials and other transactions.
Improvement of customer contact channels, with a focus on accessibility.
Continuing to improve automatic renewals for Blue Badge and Bus Pusses, to improve the customer journey.
Regular checking and maintenance of webpages and links to other information so that they are always up to date.
Further consideration and action on how best to reinstate, amend, or further improve customer access following Covid e.g. consideration of how to manage live telephone lines.
Increase the number and ways in which services seek and act upon customer feedback, including a focus on targeting service users who have been ‘hard to reach’ in the past.
Reviewing the quality, availability, and accessibility of all content published online, including for internal and partner customers
Improve refuse and recycling services through investigating root cause of repeated missed collections.
Work with colleagues on the development and implementation of digital solutions to improve service delivery and communication with the residents.
Over the next 12 months, redesign rounds to improve the refuse and recycling services and reduce missed collections.
Specific team collaborating with MyAccount team to improve the usability of website service.
Increased flexibility in resourcing phone opening times to match periods of low and high demand.
Increased resources (including backlog team) to respond to customer contacts and reduce delays to response.
Printing procurement project that will seek to reduce the time between the service uploading a letter for postage and dispatch.
Full review of Electoral Services’ webpages to reduce the number of pages and make access to online forms simpler.
Liaising with Cabinet Office, who run the Individual Electoral Registration Digital Services, about improving the website’s wording regarding re-registering due to credit score.
Housing Needs to introduce times for live phone calls to respond more quickly and in real time to customers who choose to contact us by telephone. It is anticipated that this will reduce failure demand via the phone service, resulting in fewer voicemails and emails.
Improve response rate and time to respond to emails (through implementation of customer contact channels and reduction in emails)
Ensure corporate customer complaint and customer service response times are adhered to by all services within Housing Needs.
HCS to increase opening times for live phone calls in order to respond more quickly and in real time to customers who choose to contact us by telephone. It is anticipated that this will reduce failure demand via the phone service, resulting in fewer voicemails and emails, thus speeding up response time to queries on these channels.
HCS to lead on reviewing and updating the content of Housing pages on BHCC website. This to include developing accessible forms for customers to access the service, reducing reliance on free form emails in collaboration with colleagues in Housing Needs and Private Sector Housing.
HCS to lead on developing process / roadmaps for customers, to include which area will be responsible for their issues, time frames and contact points.
Recruitment to vacant posts
Implementing improvements to communication channels to ensure customer expectation aligns with service delivery capabilities
Comprehensive consultation with library users and non-users, to improve services
Implementing a regular newsletter and service update emails to councillors
Implementing a more systematic monitoring system for telephone enquiries
Improve website experience, to improve the customer journey and make it easier to find the information needed.
Improve telephone answering times through phone option remodelling and analysis of calls received.
Improve response time to email contact, through implementation of customer contact forms and balancing of resources across all channels of contact.
Introduce bespoke customer satisfaction surveys at the end of each transaction, focusing on whether standards for customer service delivery were maintained
To improve communication skills of officers, training to include the importance of customer care and skills for effective communication.
Client Management – introduction of named points of contact for selected agents to improve our relationships with regular customers.
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Hub
When the PPE Hub contacts requestors to advise their PPE is ready for collection, they are to ensure the following is clearly communicated:
Ensure the parking space for customer use is clearly delineated with paint so that all customers are aware of where they can park when they arrive at the PPE Hub.
Introduce a process to seek more regular customer feedback.
Improve the quality and accessibility of information about Transport services on the Brighton & Hove City Council website.
Develop our approach to customer contact so that reports and queries are responded to in a timely manner and customers are kept informed.
Ensure corporate customer complaint and customer service response times are adhered to by every part of the service.
We welcome any suggestions, questions or other feedback about this report
Please send an email to: