Our teams

The Service Improvement team is a small team made up of a Lead Manager, Digital Project Manager and Business Analysts.

Working closely with the Customer Service Centre (CSC), the website Online Service Delivery team (OSD) and the Data & Performance team we identify and implement opportunities for improvement whilst enhancing the customer journey.

Our main programme of work is providing digital channels for customers to contact us. This includes a chatbot, webchat, interactive interactive voice response (IVR) using artificial intelligence (AI).  This will enhance the CSC offering as we will not be removing any channels but hoping to free the telephone lines for customers who have complex needs.

Through a continuous improvement approach, we support the CSC to work in the most efficient and effective way. We also support services to identify areas of their back-office process that could move into the CSC therefore releasing valuable time within their service.

Our Customer Service Centre is the councils corporate front door for phone and email contact and supports 23 services across the council. We receive on average 300,000 calls and 80,000 emails a year.

Within the CSC we have 4 teams who are supported by team managers:

• Core Services (17 internal and external service areas)
• Highways & outdoor services
• Social Care (adults' and children's)
• Blue Badge Service who process all customer applications.

We work closely with the Service Improvement team who is helping the CSC make available to customers the option of digital channels, helping the team to answer easy low complex enquiries through these digital channels, freeing up our Customer Service Officers to support customers who have more complex needs. 

We also work closely with the Data & Quality Assurance team who help us plan for the level of customer contact we will receive and the number of staff that are needed to quickly answer the calls.  

We manage the corporate receptions and our professional Customer Service Officers will welcome all visitors with a smile. This team have a wealth of knowledge, which helps them to answer a number of customer enquiries and quickly connect them to the officer who they are visiting. We also manage back-office processes such as ID badges, Pool Cars and room bookings.

Corporate reception sites:

• County Hall Chichester
• Edes House
• Record Office
• County Hall North Horsham
• Crawley Registrars

We are a small team of content designers and web editors that manage the content and customer experience on our external main website: www.westsussex.gov.uk and internal staff intranet (The Point).

The main websites are our ‘digital front door’ and ‘source of truth’ which are crucial for enabling self-service.

We ensure content is based around user need, that it is accessible and easy to find and understand.

We also use analytics to understand how customers are using the websites and this data is used to make continuous improvements.

We work alongside the CSC and support with the skill of capacity planning, which means we have the right number of people working across the CSC ensuring we are meeting our service level of 60% of calls are answered within 120 seconds.

We provide key reports to the management team which shows our performance against several PIs and KPIs which are needed to run an efficient Contact Centre Function. These reports help the management team understand the Councils Customer experience, what is working well and where we need to improve.

Every month we listen to a high number of customer interactions to ensure we are providing the best service possible. The CSC performance consistently performs in the high 90% of quality.  

We also support the Homes for Ukraine, Household Support Fund (HSF) and Refugee Settlement. We provide all the reporting and insight for these central government schemes. 

Customer Experience provide two services to Children Social Care, Advocacy and Independent Visitors, these services need to be independent of Childrens Social Care, removing any conflict of interest.

Advocates are independent people who help children and young people speak up for themselves. The service key role is to listen and make children aware of their rights and represent their views, wishes and feelings.

We also support children so they can have their say about the care and services they receive or to complain. 

Independent Visitors are volunteers, and the service primary role is to recruit volunteers who will befriend a young person or child for a minimum of 2 years- ideally and in most cases for much longer. They take out the young person one day each month to do something fun together like swimming, cinema or a trip to the beach.

These independent visitors are often the only adult who is not paid to be in that child’s life, these relationships become strong and positive for that young person.