Maximising Digital Automation in Channel Shift

To realise all the benefits of automation, the Project Board Members were anxious about the impact on citizens, whilst staff displacement meant many people were concerned about jobs.

There was uncertainty at how residents would react but, as Kirklees discovered: “Citizens were fine, so long as the process worked and was easy.”

A Project Board was created which covered all the areas affected as it was vital that they were included and empowered to agree and implement changes. The Project Board was single-minded in its determination to:

• Channel shift services online
• make this the de facto method for service delivery
• Maximise and fully exploit the resulting automation resources into higher priorities.

The project began in December and, once testing was completed in February, staff keyed the backlog from the document management system into web forms, which then automated the clearance of that backlog. Staff quickly became confident in encouraging residents to have a go themselves.

By May, 85% of address changes were being submitted online, with around three-quarters of these fully automated by webCAPTURE.

To realise all the benefits of automation, the Project Board had to promote a change in attitudes and behaviour. A Communication Plan was developed to reassure members and brief staff.

The overall strategy and direction of the council was explained, with specific challenges and targets set for the Revenues department. The benefits to resident were highlighted so employees could understand and support the changes. It was emphasised there could be no exceptions and no passengers. Managers had to accept the principles and hold the line. Nobody could be permitted to bypass new service delivery methods.

Visits and training obtained buy-in from Partners and briefings continued after live running to ensure that those who felt out of their comfort zone could be supported and assisted to adapt. The Revenues department was at the forefront of this transformation and faced additional challenges. At the time of introduction, CTR changes meant residents had to pay a minimum of 28% of Council Tax.

This had already affected collection, provisions, and arrears. The council wished to reduce the burden of CTR as soon as it could, but any change would have to be funded and required the Revenues department to reverse trends that were heading in the wrong directions.

The Revenues service would move all activities online and staff were trained to use web forms when dealing with calls. This would assist them to encourage citizens to serve themselves. Non-digital channels were monitored and progressively closed. Channel shift and back-office automation provided by webCAPTURE immediately freed up customer service and billing administration resources for reassignment into Recovery activities.

Revenues would pursue achievement of new, more challenging, targets and objectives, including:

• Achievement of a collection rate made more challenging by recent CTR changes
• Reduce provisions (which had doubled) back to normal levels within 3 years
• Substantially reduce aged arrears (which had risen to £19.5m) within 3 years
• Deploy webCAPTURE without delay, in 14 weeks, with Live running to coincide with annual billing, to maximise returns on investment

Good publicity and communications helped encourage uptake. Annual bills explained the new ways to engage and old stationary, email addresses and general enquiry telephone numbers were withdrawn.

Service point advertisements were removed and old payment methods no longer publicised. Service points were equipped with self-service terminals, manned by one person, to look after six citizens simultaneously. This facilitated a front-to-back office redeployment, via targeted internal recruitment.

“If you’re closing channels, you need to understand what’s happening” Steve Bird, Head of Welfare & Exchequer Services, Kirklees Council.

Volumes of online transactions were tracked every week to ensure a steadily rising trend. Other channels were also reported, with deviations from a steadily declining trend investigated and, if necessary, fixed.

Automation provided the means to improve working practices and processes. “These were changed to suit automation, not the other way round.”

The demarcation between Billing and Recovery was removed; staff were trained to work generically on the most important activities. All staff answered the telephone in any area, using web forms to capture information. Revenues quickly got on track to meet its Collection target.

There was a change in culture. Billing staff no longer checked 100% of everything. Low value housekeeping activities were discouraged and most writing out for further information ceased. A new working presumption was that the council will be charging and webCAPTURE with auto-indexing will trigger and prioritise interventions, which would happen only when the council stood to make a financial gain.

The results of this approach were monitored and just one customer complaint was received from 50,000 bills despatched.