Introduction

High performing, service led organisations are customer focused*.

Over the past three years, Mole Valley District Council has worked to improve the customer experience, focussing on our core values to Care, Listen, Trust, Lead and Respect. We have been reviewing and developing our services with our customers in mind, delivering new easy-to-use online forms to enable access to more of our services 24/7.

Our digital by choice approach has meant we have invested in improving our website to ensure it is more accessible and easier to navigate; and we have engaged with our local communities to help inform the decisions we have taken on a range of issues from playground design to budget-setting.

This new Customer Engagement Strategy sets out our vision, principles, and approach to customer engagement as we transition through Evolve 2026. By using this strategy and the principles contained within it, we will consistently design and deliver our services with the customer at the heart of everything that we do, whilst pro-actively managing ongoing financial pressures. 

Objectives

This is one of the four pillars under Evolve 2026, closely aligned to our Digital, Service Transformation and People strategies. The strategy aims to deliver the following objectives:

Channel Shift

Improving customer service with value for money in mind, means we need to encourage a successful channel shift (see ‘shift left’ below) – with customers increasingly choosing online interactions, so that we can increase capacity to support customers with more complex issues. Our aim is to minimise the need for our customers to contact us by getting it right first time – addressing the root cause of any issues to avoid them happening again. In order to do this, we need to understand more clearly why they contact us currently. This will be a two-stage approach:

1. Where we first review our direct contact within high traffic service areas (both phone and email) and consider whether there are any ‘quick wins’ such as e-forms, improved web pages, more informative and easy to read correspondence and better signposting to other organisations. Part of this will be understanding how to ensure that the majority of phone contact comes via a contact centre model, simplifying customer entry into MVDC so that more enquiries can be resolved at first point of contact and internal structures are not shown to or felt by our customers. This will free up experts to handle more complex casework.
2. The second stage will be to review interactions with a view to reducing the amount of telephone and face-to-face enquiries that we receive overall, by making further online improvements based on the customer experience and implementing new services such as online Direct Debit and Live Chat.

We will also look to expand our online databases which will allow us to increase efficiency of direct communications and reduce cost per message.

A central guiding principle to our customer engagement strategy will be to adopt a shift left approach to our customer contact. In essence, MVDC will actively encourage customers to choose to utilise our more cost effective and efficient methods of engagement.

This will require us to ensure that our e-enabled offer is the preferred way of interacting with the council by making the solutions simple and to match expectations of our customer base.

Improved customer experience

Our aim is to embed a continuous improvement culture, so that we are confident and capable in providing a positive and effective customer experience that adapts to changes over time. To do this, we will engage where appropriate with our communities as we make changes to our services, listening and using insight to improve and evolve. We will empower our staff to deliver consistent, high-quality services and by embedding a sustainable continuous improvement culture we will also encourage staff to use the insight we gain from our customers to improve the user experience by reducing failure demand and quickly adapting to emerging trends.

We know from web and e-form usage data that many of our residents, businesses and visitors want to engage with us online. We will undertake customer journey mapping to fully understand the customer experience and do all we can to make our website and e-forms so easy to use that they become the ‘go to’ way of contacting us. For those who are unable to use our digital services, we will review our processes so that we can do more to resolve calls and visits at the first point of contact.

Our structured, geo-targeted and pro-active communications inform residents about MVDC projects, services, and support available, delivering the right messages to the right audiences at the right time. Communicating via social media where possible provides opportunities of real-time updates and an effective feedback channel for customers; we will continue building up our presence through these platforms while still offering more traditional channels for those who need them.   

Finally, by using integrated marketing and communications campaigns we will increase reach and engagement.

No-One Left Behind

We will ensure that all our digital services are built with accessibility in mind, and we treat customer data with respect. Our communications channels will be inclusive, and our staff trained in producing accessible content and they understand the need to deliver easy-to-read messages. We will try to identify and engage with hard-to-reach customers’ groups.

Although we will provide services that are accessible 24/7 and are fast, reliable, and efficient, we also understand that there are some people who may have more complex needs, where human interaction is key to help resolve the issue at hand, so we will continue to ensure there is an offer by phone and in person. Our values to listen and to care mean that no-one gets left behind.

How will it feel? 

In line with our core values:

• We Trust. Customers are confident that MVDC consistently delivers fast and efficient services, 24/7, and ensures information is always safely handled.  
• We Respect. Customers feel understood, respected, and valued. 
• We Listen. There is support available for those who don’t feel confident to use our digital channels and we ensure all our content is accessible. 
• We Care. Empathy is key and our tone will always reflect our compassion.
• We Lead. We will continue to review our different channels of communication to help us deliver our services to the right people in the right way.

Design Principles

Our customer engagement design principles will be: 

Customer focused – all services will be reviewed and designed with the customer in mind. We must place the customer at the heart of all new initiatives, process improvements, and digital designs. We will resolve as many enquiries as possible at the first point of contact. Our Values will drive what we do and how we do it. 

Delivering better services – changes made will focus on delivering better, more effective services (money, time, impact) utilising cheaper and easier to access online services. 

Using customer insight – we will investigate where and how things go wrong and find ways to improve services to avoid the need to contact us.  

Stakeholder specific – we will be clear where we are consulting or informing while role modelling and emphasising our values in all we do. 

Defining structured communications – communications plans are built into all change initiatives (key groups impacted always feeling informed) – we will proactively update and inform our customers wherever possible and ensure that our content is accessible for everyone. 

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