Ipswich Borough Council recently opened a top modern one stop shop delivering joint services alongside other agencies such as Suffolk County Council and the Police Service.
As part of the change management strategy at Ipswich Borough Council, a new team of generic customer service advisors were recruited and trained.
"Thanks to this new team, we can now offer high standards of customer care," said Paul Farrer, Customer Services Centre Manager. "Each team member can assist customers across a wide range of council services." he said.
All customer services advisors undertook an intensive training programme covering the technical and knowledge element of the role.
They were also trained in customer care skills to improve their interaction with the customers.
"All staff have been very positive about the changes in the service delivery," said Paul Farrer. "There is now much more emphasis on providing quality service to ensure we get things right the first time," he said. "Everyone knows failure in service will result in repeated visits and potentially unhappy customers."
Control queues
A state of the art customer flow management system from Q-Matic allows the management team to control queues in real time. They are also able to review real time management data to plan service improvements and resource modelling.
"Q-Matic has been instrumental in helping ensure the one-ipswich centre opened with minimal inconvenience and fuss for visitors," said Paul Farrer. "Q-Matic's previous experience in the deployment and implementation of their systems into similar environments helped with the IT installation, positioning of screens and naming the queues for example," he said. "Q-MATIC's recommendations were based on good practice and helped the centre open with minimal disruption. We have now been open a few months and we are looking at other system modules to help us further increase our efficiency and productivity - self-service ticketing for example."
Meet and greet staff
The multi agency centre in the Town Hall of Ipswich is a Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) aimed at joining up services for the Ipswich community
The centre opened under the LSP branding so customers would not have the inconvenience of seeking out the service they needed. Now they simply tell the meet and greet staff what they want and are then directed to the relevant service. With multi agencies on site staff can work together behind the scenes across organisations to meet the customers' needs.
The Police Service
In addition to the services offered by Ipswich Borough Council, Suffolk County Council - through their service delivery partner Customer Service Direct - offer county council services. Mid Suffolk District Council also provide their services at the centre. The Police have closed the police station during one-Ipswich's operational hours and welcome the ability to serve their customers in the centre alongside other agencies.
"Plans for the future include welcoming new partner organisations including other local authorities and the charity and voluntary sectors," Paul Farrer said. "We are also planning on expanding the scope of council and partner services, reducing the time our customers need to wait and increasing the number of customer transactions we can resolve while the customer is with us," he said. "We have plans to develop a contact centre to run alongside one-Ipswich using the same staff team to manage all council email, web and telephone customer contact. We also hope to work with partners to develop neighbourhood centres around the outskirts of Ipswich where customers can access all services available at the one stop shop locally."