Another look at Transforming the ‘Request a bin’ service at West Berkshire Council
This post is a case study from service design in the public sector
An example of what many think that designing a service is all about, that focuses on the customer experience and using Digital to enable and automate administration.
But what if we design the whole service workflow itself, using person centred and systems thinking principles?
1. That when someone requests a bin, in one study 70% had additional questions related to the bin. They might be moving into the borough, or have had their bin stolen. Or, the bin might have been damaged. Each demand is different and one that an automated and re-defined digital system would be difficult to recognise.
2. What matters to the person is often only understood when we ask them. For instance, do they need a bin for a few weeks only, or has someone new joined the household?
2. The overall process of approvals and sending out a bin, whether they require payments or not, has remained the same. It is this end to end redesign, that if included in the transformation, will yield the benefits. If you look at the end to end, it is possible to redesign the flow so that the call gets routed to the contractor regardless of Digital. In one end to end transformation this is what happened,
- The call is routed directly to the contractor, or the customer service operative in the council
- The council will engage in a conversation and determine if the bin is required according to policy, and if there is a fee. These circumstances cannot easily be automated into a Digital logic.
- The fee, if appropriate, is then dealt with directly.
- The call taker will schedule in an operative to visit the property, when they are in the neighbourhood doing other work.
- The operative has a conversation with the householder.
- The operative has the authority to approve the bin, according to the local council rules. Sometimes the operative needs proof of disability or increase in householders.
- The operative will have a bin in the back of the van.
- They unload the bin,
- Call in the office to update the record, and job done.
The result is a workflow that is designed against the person creating the demands. The workflow contains the value steps that are needed, and integrate any approvals that are required into the value steps, stripping out waste. How do you tell if the Digital front end or a person needs to answer the calls? Record the failure demand from Bin Replacement at customer services and you will hear fall-out from the Digital front end.
Taking service design to the whole workflow allows for the savings from the end to end workflow model are far higher than simply a Digital front end.
