Our customers
Customer strategy
Our customer strategy has enhanced the way we deliver services. It sets out how we will ensure our services are delivered to meet the diverse range of customer needs, from simple transactional requirements through to more complex, emotive interactions.
We know that many of our customers now expect to be able to access services digitally. To support this we have improved the range of information and number of services available online enabling more customers to self-serve. We still ensure that those who require extra assistance, support over the phone or face to face is still available. We will continue to improve the accessibility rating of our website through implementing new technologies, including the launch of a Digital Assistant on our website and on our main phone lines, which will remove barriers to access and enable services to be delivered at a time and place that suits individuals.
Our engagement with customer advocates, representative groups and service users enables us to gain a better understanding of customer needs and expectations, and through our Human Centred Design methodology this ensures EDI is at the forefront when developing and designing new solutions that meet our customers’ current and future needs and expectations.
Engagement
The engagement team supports engagement and consultation activities across all service areas within Lincolnshire County Council reaching our communities to understand their views.
We engage with individuals and groups including, but not limited to, service users and voluntary sector organisations that are identified through stakeholder analysis for each. The team then support with:
- facilitating engagement workshops, face to face and online engagement events, for example workshops to build on responses received through County Views surveys
- engagement activities hosted on the Let’s talk Lincolnshire online engagement platform. This uses a variety of interactive tools (including surveys, polls, stories, ideas, question and answers, forums, guestbook and maps)
- Equality Impact Analysis which is then published on Let’s talk Lincolnshire project pages when required
- Promoting engagement activities in line with engagement and communication plans
Methods of communication include:
- voluntary sector communications channels
- town and parish newsletter (monthly and sent to all clerks to share with the councillors)
- parish clerk database
- Let’s talk Lincolnshire database
- county view survey (contains recurring questions and service specific questions). This is promoted across the Lincolnshire area (including district councils)
- promotions through county councillors
- publishing engagement reports (unless commercially sensitive) and ‘You Said, We Did’ updates on Let’s talk Lincolnshire, sharing the findings and decisions with participants where applicable as part of closing the engagement activity loop.
There has been a rise in the range of engagement methods used with the introduction of the online platform Let’s talk Lincolnshire in late 2021. In the year 2022 to 2023 we conducted 65 engagement activities including:
- 56 public and wider stakeholder engagements and 9 internal engagement activities.
- Between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023, there were over 11,000 responses to activities on the Let’s talk platform. These include:
- Over 10,400 surveys submissions
- 446 responses to a single quick poll
- 485 visitors to the ideas page, where 29 ideas were shared and there were 364 ‘likes’
- 524 visitors to guestbooks, where residents and business can share their views
- 4,646 visitors to news pages
- Let’s talk Lincolnshire is used alongside more traditional methods of engagement, such as face-to-face events and postal or telephone surveys (including almost 12,000 SNAP survey responses). The platform allows for better intelligence, data analysis and reporting and contributes to more informed decisions being made as a result.
- The County Views surveys have now entered their fourth year. They are an important way for us to gather local opinions so we can improve services for the whole of Lincolnshire. 401 people took part in the survey about Council priorities in November 2022, 363 in the survey about communication and media in July 2022 and 557 took part in the survey about highways, roads, and transport in April 2022.
- Anyone that accesses the website can register on it to:
- take part in engagement activity
- receive a dedicated email newsletter
- be updated about the projects progress they have participated or expressed their interest in
- be notified when reports are published, or decisions have been made
- There are currently 3,347 registered participants, of whom:
- 1,646 are members of the public, organisations and under 12s
- 1,701 staff participants (including 230 administrators)
- The registration form consists of several questions and allows participants to provide additional information including demographic data.
- Survey tools and poll tools do not require registration by default. It is up to the service area what information is crucial to collect and if necessary to build important demographic or equality monitoring questions into their survey.
- The registration process allows us to:
- understand community participation profile across all projects (including demographic data)
- secure and verify community feedback, for example authenticated participants feedback when there is a need to collect personal data
- build trust and relationship with the participants
- Registration might also be a barrier to participation, as people may want to remain anonymous. Therefore, the service area has a choice to select the right approach to collect the data they need within an engagement activity
Accessibility
Accessibility statement – Lincolnshire County Council
Our website is audited and monitored to meet accessibility standards. We have made text as simple as possible to understand. It can be read with a screen reader and pages can be adjusted. We have identified cases where information is not fully accessible such as PDF documents and customers can ask for information in a different format if needed. We are working towards replacing as many PDFs as possible with HTML web pages.
Customer data
We are committed to promoting an environment in which people feel safe in being open about their background, beliefs and identity. As part of this commitment, we encourage the freedom of individuals to self-identify and to express their preferences in a safe environment. Following requests from customers to make changes to the information we hold on our records about their name, gender or title, we produced guidance and top tips. This provides everyone in the Council with a 'One Council' approach that is clear, consistent and straightforward. The guidance supports our colleagues working directly with customers or customer data. It enables them to respond to a request for a change in customer details in a way that:
- is sensitive to the customer
- meets underpinning legislation
- ensures the dignity and privacy of the customer is maintained, whilst minimising any risk to the customer, the Council and our partners
Our equality, diversity and inclusion customer data annual report provides further information.
Customer complaints
We put our customers first and the views of our customers are important to us. When customers need to raise concerns, we encourage them to first raise them with the individual concerned or their line manager so that the problems can be addressed. Alternatively, customers can also speak to one of our Customer Relations Advisers. Our first step is to always attempt to provide early resolution of the issue before progressing to the next formal stage. Our Complaints Policy is published on our website so customers can see our complaints process.
Corporate and statutory complaints annual report
Over the year 2022 to 2023 we received 1928 contacts from the public to express dissatisfaction with the services they had been provided.
- 353 (18%) were resolved to the customer’s satisfaction through early resolution.
- 1575 contacts went on to enter the formal complaints process.
In comparison to the previous year there was:
- an increase of 15% in the number of contacts received
- a 21% decrease in early resolution cases
- 28% increase in the number contacts entering the formal complaints process
The higher volume of contacts has contributed to the decrease in cases resolved informally. Throughout the year a renewed focus has been placed on the informal resolution of cases.
The complaints process does not record the protected characteristics of complainants. Therefore, it is not possible to identify from the data whether people experience our services differently depending on their personal characteristics.
Interpretation and translation service
We have a contract in place to provide our employees with communication support when providing services to service users who speak or read languages other than English, or who need to communicate in English in non-spoken ways. This includes transcription, face to face and video translation. It is available from locations around the county.
In 2022 to 23 there were 4,877 bookings (1,862 in 2021 to 2022) for the interpretation and translation service for 56 different languages. 82.6% (4027) of bookings were from children’s services to support their interactions with the community. The most required languages were:
- Polish (18.7% or 913)
- Bulgarian (14.9% or 726)
- Romanian (10.6% or 517)
- Russian (9.5% or 463)
- Ukrainian (5.8% or 285)
Equality Impact Analysis
We have integrated the equality duty into the decisions we make about the services we provide to the people of Lincolnshire. We consider how any policy, project or proposed change to services may affect people with protected characteristics in different ways. Our process for Equality Impact Analysis (EIAs) helps us to ensure better informed decision-making and policy development for the customer. We conducted an analysis on the impacts of our Corporate Plan on people with protected characteristics so that we can make sure everyone benefits from living, working and visiting Lincolnshire.
Our approach gives responsibility to service managers for conducting EIAs. They understand the strategic needs for their proposals and the customer base so can identify potential impacts on customers and other services. Our online learning is available for any employee involved in EIAs.
Equality Impact Analysis documents are available on request from each service.