Helping Northamptonshire County Council transform its customer service operation

We improved Northamptonshire County Council’s customer service for 630,000 residents, reducing costs by 40% of previous budget

Improving service, reducing costs

Northamptonshire County Council (NCC) needed to improve how it served its 630,000 residents while delivering budget reductions of 28 per cent. To help it achieve this, it appointed PA to transform customer service provision – ranging from adult social care to highways – from a complex multi-stakeholder system, through which services were managed independently, to one through which they are managed centrally.

We designed and implemented a customer service centre in which to amalgamate management of front line services. In the course of our work, we removed duplications between service areas, oversaw the transition to the new centre and ensured the supporting technology was in place on time. We also encouraged a greater number of people to use the council’s website by involving users in its testing and development.

Our work for NCC has led to a 40%, saving in customer-service operating costs. Service to users has also improved with 80% of calls now answered within 20 seconds and fewer than 5% abandoned. As these metrics were not previously measured, we have also introduced a means by which customer services can be benchmarked for future improvements.