Additional service benefits that you get from participating rather than just linking are:
service participation used as an effective training tool not
just for IT, but for reference skills, searching and using qualatative
date and good customer service.
a heightened awareness by
staff of electronic subscriptions, thereby increasing staff awareness
of the subscriptions and then the ability to better help your citizens.
ability to have local questions referred within the software to enable citizens to be serviced by their own library staff.
the
ability to create permanent local chat or email services.
making every customer contact count as all referrals can be
rtacked within the software and queries can be sent anywhere within the
council for a reply. These can all be tracked to ensure there is a full
customer contact audit.
Examples of local services:
Luton have completed 3
'Ask-the-Chief Executive' sessions with Mr Kevin Crompton, these have
been extremely successful.
"As a Chief Executive I am always looking for ideas as to
how to have more direct contact with our community. When I saw the
People's Network Enquire service, it occurred to us that this would be
a possible medium for one to one chat with members of our community.
It appeared to offer the right balance of confidentiality
and direct contact. It allows me to take all sorts of enquiries with
the comfort that if I can not give an answer we always have the option
to print off the request and offer the enquirer a further written
response or other follow up.
In the three sessions we have run I have answered a wide
range of questions ranging from complaints about anti social behaviour,
housing matters, rubbish collection, plans for a new swimming pool and
other matters such as what did I think of the manager of Luton Town
Football Club ! I was also pleased to receive some contributions where
individuals just wanted to say thank you to the Council.
The numbers of enquiries we take in any 2 hour session is
relatively small ( around 15 ) but there is a spin off in terms of the
message that we are listening Council goes further than those who use
the service. We also answer questions logged by individuals who could
not get through directly to me.
We are still discussing how to make the medium more
effective and it is still early days. I think we will continue to run
these 'Ask the Chief Executive' for the foreseeable future and indeed
our new Leader of the Council has expressed interest in going on line.
I think the sessions send the right message to our
community that we want to listen and I am extremely grateful to my
colleagues in the Luton Library service and those colleagues in the
Libraries network who have supported this initiative." Mr Kevin Crompton, Chief Executive Luton Borough Council.
North Somerset have recently completed their first
Ask-the Chief-Executive session and have also run a Councillor clinic.
