Summary
'...people no longer accept the 'one size fits all' service models of old. They want choice over the services they receive, influence over those who provide them and higher service standards. It is now time to show our confidence in local government, local communities and other local public service providers by giving them more freedom and powers to bring about the changes they want to see.'
Rt. Hon Ruth Kelly MP Strong and prosperous communities,
The Local Government White Paper, October 2006
Local authorities have risen to this challenge and are changing the way services are delivered to increase take-up and improve customer satisfaction. For these changes to continue to be successful we need to keep pace with the expectations, preferences and needs of local people.
In Calderdale we want to deliver excellent services for customers through identifying and using appropriate tools and techniques to develop customer understanding. The Regional Reputation Project set out to profile types of customers living in Calderdale, in order to target communications activity to meet their likely needs and preferences. Very quickly we realised the project had a much wider scope to be used at the heart of service planning and delivery, ensuring we could target valuable resources much more effectively and in a more customer focused way.
Calderdale Council has piloted the use of customer profiling to support four service aims. Our intention is to develop a framework for making this capability available council-wide. We will continue to share our learning and be involved in customer insight locally, regionally and nationally.
We hope you find this toolkit useful in understanding how we approached customer profiling. If you have any questions or feedback, please get in touch.