Part of presentation on customer access and channel shift presented to the annual conference of the public sector IT management organisation, Socitm, on 11 October 2010

1. Socitm 2010 workshop:
customer access &
channel shift
Martin Greenwood
Socitm Insight

2. Some fundamentals
• web is cheapest/best channel for many enquiries
• web is already the dominant customer channel
• channel shift has not been a priority until now
• many councils do not know volumes associated with
main customer channels and how they are changing
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3. Where’s our data from? - 1
Better connected:
Socitm’s annual survey of all
council websites
Every site reviewed by expert
team from a customer
perspective – tests usefulness
and usability
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4. Where’s our data from? - 2
Website take-up service
Used by 33% of all councils
Pop-up survey offered to
one in five web users
What were they looking for
did they find it, how good
was the experience?
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5. Where’s our data from? - 3
Channel value
benchmarking
Small groups of councils
Compare cost, scope and
value from all channels
Benchmarking to identify
improvement
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6. Web is already the dominant channel
Listen to what
customers do:
not what
they say they do
Source: GovMetric
(May 2010)

7. Scale and growth of web enquiries
Visits* Jan 10 Feb 10 Jul 10
Visits to WTS sites 17,941,295 11,045,691 13,124,962
Estimate for all UK 45.5m 30.9m 34.5m
Change for all UK Up 37.3% Up 5.3% Up 11.7%
Source: WTS. (Definition of visit conforms with CoI guidelines)
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8. Web is the cheapest channel
• Face-to-face £7.40 per visit • Face-to-face £7.81
• Telephone £4.00
• Phone £2.90 per call • Web £0.17
• Web £0.32 per visitor (Source NWeGG. 2006)
Also, another study
(Source: (Apr 09)
Socitm Insight, Aug 2010)
• Face-to-face £5.51
• Telephone £2.53
• Web £0.17
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9. Web is not joined up with other channels - 1
According to Better connected 2010 just 49% of
councils refer out of hours callers to the website
Better connected first reported on this telephone test
in 2006 – when 20% referred callers to website
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10. Web is not joined up with other channels - 2
Result of recent survey for forthcoming customer
access and online channel report
Q Are face-to-face, phone and web channels
managed in the same or different
departments/directorates?
A Same 55%
Different 45%
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11. Websites not good enough for shift:
Q Did you find what you were looking for today ?
evidence from Website take-up service
• 21.14% say ‘No, not at all’
• 21.26% say ‘ Yes, in part’
Source: Website take-up service (April 2010)
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12. Cost of web visit failures
• Calculation is based on likelihood that customers
will revert to more costly phone or f2f channel
• We ask customers for preferred channel after web
• We multiply failures by alternative channel cost
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13. Web failures are costly
For the full year Cost of failure
(£2.90 per failed visit)
Shire county £1.27m
Shire district £0.26m
London borough £1.13m
Met district £1.18m
Unitary (E) £0.90m
Unitary (W) £0.52m
Unitary (S) £0.62m
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14. Understanding channel volumes
and cost: the starting point for
channel shift
© Socitm Ltd