About
Your local supermarket knows what you're likely to buy before you even walk in the door. They understand why you shop in their store, what you are likely to buy and will do all they can to encourage you back again and again. How do they do it?
Background
In 2005 Calderdale Council secured funding from the Yorkshire & Humber Capacity Building Programme to manage The Regional Reputation Project: showing how local authorities can better understand groups and types of customers by using tools and techniques from the private sector. This understanding allows councils to tailor communication activities, increase awareness and take-up of services, and in the long term to improve their reputation.
The project piloted the use of Experian's Mosaic Public Sector classification - a generic profiling tool which uses a wide range of data to group people according to their socio-demographics, lifestyles, culture and behaviour. This is known as 'modelled' data. There are other tools available on the market, such as CACI's Acorn.
Profiling can
be used for
- Informing how to approach perception and behaviour change indicators for the Comprehensive Area Assessment and Local Area Agreement
- NI14 - understanding how customer expectations differ across customer groups to help minimise avoidable contact
- Improving customer satisfaction by tailoring services to customer need
- Targeting messages and communications more appropriately
- Informing access to services, policy and performance and resource allocation
- Understanding the expectations of different customer groups to ensure we keep pace with their changing needs
- Creating better reputation through understanding customer needs and delivering services effectively
The Calderdale
Project included
- Profiling Calderdale households using the Mosaic Public Sector classifcation tool to gain an overall understanding of our residents
- Applying Mosaic Public Sector codes to council service data to help address specific service issues to provide case studies
- Sharing learning from the above through this toolkit and presenting the findings regionally and nationally.
Summary
- Customer profiling has a place in the public sector as well as the private sector
- Profiling can be used in many areas of local authority work
- The Regional Reputation Project piloted this approach within Calderdale Council