We continue to transform our customer experience, more recently through the development of our website and content management system (CMS). Working in delivery phases, at the moment the platform is divided into three focussed areas:
- Website – Content Management System (CMS)
- Customer Account and Contact Management (CCM)
- E forms and workflow – enabling services to be delivered in a consistent way improving customer experience through the platform
Almost at the end of phase two, we are laying the foundations of the Customer Account and Contact Management.
What have we achieved so far?
Since our last update, the project team have been making great progress with the customer account and we are gaining invaluable knowledge on how to adapt the modules provided in the Customer Platform so that the components can function and display exactly as people need in Dorset.
ICT colleagues have created the account using the ‘out-of-the-box’ components available from Placecube, and we have completed our first round of user testing to get feedback which is helping us to make ongoing improvements to the account. The account although basic at first will evolve over time as we add and display more service data in it that people will find useful.
In June, we introduced a new commercial waste online variable pricing model quoting tool. Since its introduction, the model has exceeded expectations in terms of uptake, automation of manual processing, and the number of onboarded contracts on different models. We have received 80+ so far, and the team are now reviewing feedback so we can further improve the experience. We will begin to actively promote this new service soon, which may well see even more uptake and income generation.
To deliver the solution ICT colleagues decoupled the charging model from the presentation layer. We have built it in a modular way using both Granicus e-forms and Java code to enable us to connect to any presentation layer. It is configurable to mean we can reuse the charging model for different services going forward. Breaking the solution down and creating specific components means we can incrementally improve the service, which is important as this is just the first iteration that we can extend in future and connect into the business account once available on the customer platform.
One returning customer, who had previously tried the old process and decided to go with a different operator, stated “If you had the process first-time around, I would have gone with you – it was so easy”.
In other news, Mike Connell from Rugby Borough council spoke at Digital Leaders about the Local Digital Fund project we are involved in to develop waste services on the customer platform. As we come to the end of a phase we participated in a retrospective to be able to share our learning with others.
What is next?
- continually improving the Customer Account and Contact Management experience
- incorporating the Dorset Council Newsroom
- considering the needs and how we integrate consultation and engagement with the customer account
- consider work coming out of the Children’s Digital Family Offer user research
- consider how we might develop the platform to support commercialisation and traded services building on the Waste commercial quoting tool work
- capabilities to publish performance and graphical data on the website
