NI14 - practical solutions to reduce avoidable contact

Jenny Robins (06 June 2008  16:27)

Source - esd Toolkit

esd Toolkit is already established and validated as the key national organisation for local authority service data and standards, and at minimal cost. It is well placed to provide national capability, support and guidance in managing the challenge of meeting the requirements of NI 14 - reducing avoidable contact.

To support the delivery of NI 14, the esd Toolkit work programme for 2008-9 is designed to address the following:

• Enable the use of avoidable contact data to identify key points of leverage for end to end service analysis and improvement
• Promote the understanding that identification of avoidable contact should lead to efficiency savings (linked to NI179) through improvements to services
• Learning and achievement of shared understanding through organic development of consensus of definitions, principles and applications by use of an esd-toolkit Wiki
• Access to national guidance on principles & methodology for data collection, analyses and interpretation
• Collection of avoidable contact data across a variety of criteria (e.g. time, service, channel, customer identification, cause of contact, etc.)
• Collection and collation of raw LA data on a service-by-service basis (via automatic transfer from CRM where possible, thus eliminating overhead of data entry)
• Aggregation of raw data to enable and/or automate a variety of analyses and reports (e.g. NI 14 summary report and NI 14 service groups; use of customer identification data to integrate with segmentation analyses for customer insight use)
• Support the understanding of the relationship between the reduction in avoidable contact and improved customer satisfaction measures
• Identify trends in avoidable contact over time. Trends might indicate improved sophistication in measurement and/or a reduction in avoidable contact
• Consider how and where to identify and avoid unnecessary contact across organisation boundaries and services (e.g. building on Chorley's circles of need concept)
  

To achieve all this, the esd Toolkit programme 2008-09 will:

• Consult with LAs, central government, associated agencies and technical suppliers
• Explore and exploit beneficial relationships between measures of avoidable contact, Chorley's circles of need and customer profiling/customer insight
• Recommend the use of robust auditable processes and methodologies
• Support the development of consistent approaches for those councils without CRMs
• Enable the sharing of successes and case studies, focusing on quantifiable outcomes for customers
  

Success criteria

• Ability for every authority to measure and record avoidable contact using esd-toolkit
• Ability for authorities to use NI 14 data to identify key points of leverage for end to end service improvement
• Reduction in avoidable contact in front office through improvements in back office/service delivery (end-to-end service improvement)
• Availability of data to inform channel strategies and assist evidence based decisions on investment in service transformation
• Ability of authorities to compare 'rich' information to identify where to focus attention
  

Benefits include:

• Improved services (customers' perspective)
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Removal of waste
• Efficiencies
• Increased organisational capacity

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

We have started to assemble a list of FAQs for the national indicator NI-14, which we have been collecting during discussions at the current round of esd-toolkit TLC (regional user groups) and a the Citizen Insight working group. This will be a document with continuous revision and can be downloaded by subscribing esd-toolkit local authorities by clicking here

Become involved

For more details and to become more involved, make yourself known to our programme lead in this area email Tony Hinkley

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