Insights everywhere

Earlier this week I had a meeting with the consultants we (the IDeA and the LGA) had commissioned to write some guidance on customer insight.   It was a good, productive meeting.  The draft is looking good, though it’s still at early stages.

Customer insight was originally about customers – originating in the private sector, it was a concept which meant understanding what drives customers using data from a range of sources.  The aim was, of course, to be able to sell them more.

In the public sector things are different.  Sometimes we interact with people as “customers” – the consumers of a service like leisure or housing benefit.   Often we interact with people in a much more complex way as citizens or as community or interest group members.  Each of these relationships is important and we need to understand what drives and motivates people on each of these levels.   The guidance we’re working on seeks to take in both the customer and citizen perspective – and will focus on using all kinds of data in all kinds of ways to drive improvement.  The important thing is that this sources of data aren’t overlooked and that they’re used systematically and effectively in decision making, prioritisation and service improvement.

We hope the guidance will be example rich and to that end we’re calling for more examples through the Policy and Performance Community of Practice and the Customer Insight CoP.  (You must be registered at www.communities.idea.gov.uk to see these). 

In particular, we’re looking for examples of where using customer or citizen data in insightful ways has led to real change – either at a strategic level or at a service level.  In particular, we’d be interested in any partnership examples, in health, community safety or community cohesion.   It would also be cool to get examples of the use of web2.0 / gov2.0 techniques to gather citizen insight and to have that ongoing dialogue with users and citizens.

Insight links

I’ve been meaning to do a round-up of interesting insight links for a while…and they just keep coming.

What do the folks in Morden want? - the London Borough of Merton are looking for ideas to re-invigorate the area.  And they’re using social networking (Facebook) to have that conversation with residents.  I know this area fairly well, so this one will be interesting to watch.

Council residents to be treated as consumers to boost confidence in local services:

A new review team, including customer service expertise from Tesco and the National Consumer Council, will make sure that when people use council services they are treated as consumers – who know their rights if commitments are not kept or services fall short.

New Local Government Network urges the census to take advantage of councils local insights.

The Public Sector supports National Customer Service Week (in October).

SoCITM Insight to support a “channel shifting” benchmarking service

The Channel Value Benchmarking Service, which will launch formally with a workshop in London on 17 September, will enable councils to see whether their ‘costs-to-serve’ are in line with those experienced by other, similar, councils, and to assess whether active channel management – for example encouraging customers to ‘self-serve’ via the web – could save them money.

Dominic Campbell of FutureGov outlines three projects which are all about unlocking the power of public information.