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Governance Committee
26 September 2024
Appendix 1 Customer Contact Dashboard Project
1.0 Dashboard: customer contact definitions and parameters
1.1 The dashboard is a new resource which provides a single source of truth for key customer contact channels, which is not available elsewhere. It provides an easy-to-use visual presentation of volumes and high and low trends across the council, departments, and services. It is intended to be a centralised and trusted dashboard that consolidates the data into a single source, which eliminates the duplication of effort and the risk of inaccuracies from multiple reporting and copying.
1.2 The project has focused on public facing access points for telephone calls, group email addresses, and webforms in the corporate ESCC website. The following describes more fully what is and is not included in the current dashboard development:
· All public facing telephone numbers are included.
· All public facing group email inboxes with ESCC domain (@eastsussex.gov.uk) are included.
· Webforms that are embedded into the corporate website that feed into other systems (e.g. case managements systems, mapping systems) are not included.
· In person visitors (e.g. The Keep, Libraries, Receptions) are not included.
· Contact via social media is not included.
1.3 Data on telephone calls and webforms started to be gathered from November 2022; however, email contact data was available from August 2023. It was agreed by the Board to present data in this report from August 2023 to March 2024 in order to show complete datasets for all three channels.
2.0 Engagement with services and brief analysis of customer contact data
2.1 In order to verify the data being presented in the dashboard, each team manager of the services represented in the dashboard were consulted in order to: 1) confirm contact points are public facing, and 2) verify their data either by sense checking or against any local manual reporting.
2.2 Feedback from team managers in general has been very positive, with many asking when they will be able to access the dashboard and data. Many commented they do not have access to this type of data, and it would be helpful. And for some services, the initial discussions have already highlighted changes that need to be made by exposing contact points to be investigated, clarified and improved.
2.3 As the data shows (in the image below), ESCC has a high volume of telephone calls and emails in contrast to webforms. It is important to note that the volume of contact can vary greatly across the departments and services due to the different nature of the enquiries and service delivery, such as the complexity of a query versus the proliferation of a topic or service. It may not be possible to compare departments and services like for like.
2.4 It has been acknowledged by the Board that there is an expectation that if there are any proposed service changes as a result from the information provided in the dashboard, that an Equalities Impact Assessment would be undertaken and signed off appropriately within departments.
3.0 Snapshots of Customer Contact Dashboard
3.1 The dashboard image on the following page is to provide an example of the look and feel of the dashboard.
3.2 The dashboard has been developed in Tableau (visual analytics platform). Within the dashboard there are navigation notes. The Board is currently seeking to gain access to the dashboard for the relevant managers which will reduce duplication and the risk of inaccuracies from reproducing the same information in Excel or PowerPoint for example. This will create a single source of truth for the data provided.
3.3 Information about the project is provided for ESCC staff on the Digital Hub Customer Contact Dashboardand about using and navigating the dashboard.
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