Local councils and self-help, making savings but providing better customer service more effectively..
Local councils have been relatively slow to offer self-help via their websites, contact centres and community hubs, however they are now moving to adopt this principle. Whether funding issues and budgets cuts are forcing them to do this or the fact that this has come from a strategic shift with a Central Government strategy to become ‘digital by default; or the fact with self service now common place in the high street supermarkets is irrelevant, self-help and self service is here to stay and will become the norm very shortly.
However, as with outsourcing (back office tasks) it is not for everyone and local councils serve a wide population with very different needs. There is an increasing need to make sure that those without the means to access the internet have alternative methods of contacting the council and can find the answers to their problems. This can be very effective if you have a good FAQ section that allows the citizen to search all relevant accessible information to which they have access. Wokingham council have recently updated their website and the FAQ section now sits prominently on their front page. Using Universal knowledge from KPS as their search facility within this section means that they can capture every question actually asked by the public and refine their content accordingly in order of importance of their customers. This allows the council to become proactive and very responsive to their customers. Using a dynamic facility this also allows FAQs to be automatically displayed (after an internal approval process) to ensure the FAQs directly match the time of year and current concerns of Wokingham residents.
