Customer Experience (CX) Plan

The City of Whittlesea is located in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, about 20 kilometres from the Melbourne Central Business District.

It's one of Australia’s largest and fastest growing municipalities, covering a land area of 489km².

We're one of the most multicultural municipalities in Victoria, with almost half of our residents speaking a language other than English at home.

Our customers

• Residents of all ages who live in our municipality.
• Sporting clubs and community organisations.
• People who work in the City of Whittlesea.
• Tourists and visitors to our municipality.
• Elected Councillors and Members of Parliament.

Our community

• Population of 229,396.
• 41.8% of our residents were born overseas.
• Median age of residents is 35 years.
• 49.8% of our residents speak a language other than English.

We will ensure our customers have a positive experience with us at every interaction and offer easy and positive ways to do business with us.

We will improve customer service through investing in technology, systems and Council staff.

Customers living within our municipality are younger than the average age across Melbourne, with residents being an average of 35 years old.

We're aware of the importance digital solutions have for our customers and are therefore starting our own digital transformation journey, with the aim of being easy to do business with and providing an excellent customer experience at every interaction.

Our current customer service options offer limited automation and channel availability. This doesn't fully meet our customers' expectations. We'll use detailed data and customer insights to improve and tailor our services to better align with what you want and need.

'Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the customer gets out of it.' - Peter Drucker

Feedback from our customers has informed our early prioritisation work.

• Implement a customer feedback loop to inform customers on action and resolution to their enquiries.
• Seek feedback from customers on their satisfaction with how their matter was resolved.
• Embed customer standards to ensure consistency, accuracy and a quality of service is provided every time.
• Invest in people and technology to support customers engaging with us via a channel of their choice, at a location and time convenient to them.

We have heard customer feedback and are committed to taking action in improving the customer experience.

We want to ensure our community receives a first class experience each time they engage with our systems, team members and information material.

Every time a customer interacts with us, we are committed to taking this as an opportunity for continuous improvement. We want to know what went well and how we can make it excellent next time, understanding each experience will help shape future interactions.

We will:

• put customers first in prioritisation, decision making and delivery
• aim to resolve matters at the first customer interaction with us
• proactively update customers on the progress of their matters
• ensure consistency in the way we resolve customer matters
• leverage our customer first principles to implement a customer feedback loop
• utilise qualitative and quantitative insights to inform how we invest and leverage digital solutions and technologies
• be easy for our customers to do business with.

The City of Whittlesea places the customer at the centre of all we do by following four guiding principles.

These principles will help direct our efforts to continuously improve the customer experience with an acknowledgement that all areas of Council have a responsibility to provide a great customer experience.

We'll work towards a plan of actions that identify and develop opportunities to improve the delivery of services and remove barriers for our customers to engage with us.

The Customer Experience (CX) Plan, coupled with our customer-first principles, will guide our transformation journey and see City of Whittlesea become an industry leader in the design and delivery of exceptional customer experiences.

The Customer Experience (CX) Plan has been adopted by Council to demonstrate the value we place on our community and commitment to becoming an industry leader in delivering an exceptional customer experience at every opportunity. 

In establishing targets and reporting on our progress each month through the CX health card, we aim to be transparent with our community on how we are listening and taking action.

Our two primary customer experience metrics will focus on customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) and customer effort. These two metrics have been selected based on qualitative and quantitative feedback from our customers, who have expressed their low satisfaction in how we have previously provided customer service and the high amount of effort required from the customer to have their matter resolved.

The CSAT and customer effort scores will have sub-metrics that sit underneath each of them, that we as an organisation are committed to improving through delivering on our goals and in turn achieving our vision of ensuring our customers have a positive experience with us at every interaction and offer effortless and positive ways for our customers to do business with us. 

To achieve our objective of becoming an industry leader in the design and delivery of exceptional customer experiences, we have created five areas of focus.

1. Transparency: we'll be transparent on our performance and leverage the insights from a CX health card to evolve our services and meet customer expectations.

2. Choice: we'll provide solutions that enable customers to engage with us through channels, times and locations that are most convenient to them.

3. Insight: we'll keep customers informed on the progress of their matters.

4. Completion: if we can't resolve customer matters at first contact, we'll aim to action it as quickly as possible.

5. Improvement: we'll implement a customer feedback loop to deliver continuous improvements that exceed customer expectations.

We'll be transparent on our performance and leverage the insights from a CX health card to evolve our services and meet customer expectations.

Customer experience initiatives

• Establish, baseline and publish our customer experience health card on our website each month.
• We aim to be transparent about our performance and track improvements in our aim to provide customers with an exceptional experience.
  
  

Choice

Provide solutions that enable customers to engage with us through channels, times and locations that are most convenient to them.

Customer experience initiative

• We'll use feedback to guide where we invest in digital solutions, teams and processes to ensure customers are able to engage with us through a channel, time and location convenient to them.
  
  

Insight

We'll keep customers informed on the progress of their matters.

Customer experience initiatives

• Establish, baseline and publish our customer experience health card on our website each month.
• We aim to be transparent about our performance and track improvements in our aim to provide customers with an exceptional experience.