Contact Council
The public sector sets the tone of its relationship with citizens and businesses through every phone, post, email and face-to-face contact. Irrespective of the medium, each interaction conveys a perception of trust, value and quality of public services to the customer.
As a key delivery mechanism of Transformational Government and a central recommendation of the Varney report, the Contact Council has oversight of all customer contact in the public sector.
The Council, when fully formed, will comprise Directors of Contact representing over 700 local authority, emergency, helpline and transaction processing contact centres.
Remit
The Contact Council will provide oversight across public sector on all matters relating to customer contact. Initially the Council is already overseeing the improvement of performance and standards in publicly funded contact centres, facilitating the promotion of best practices as a norm in contact centres and leading the development of customer contact as a profession in government.
In the longer term the Contact Council will set and have oversight of the delivery of a mid– and long–term vision for public service contact. Specifically the Council’s responsibilities include:
- Leading, and being seen to lead, customer contact in the public sector and owning oversight responsibility for customer contact in the public sector including setting and delivering a vision for future public services contact and providing professional advice and guidance on policy–related matters;
- Managing the transformation of contact in Government (matching and bettering private sector best practice), developing and implementing plans across government to improve customer contact;
- Establishing effective links with departmental insight functions and taking forward the implementation of the Government's principles of channel use;
- Building the customer contact competence and creating a network of professionals in Government by actively promoting the development of customer contact skills across the 60,000 public sector contact centre staff;
- Delivering a joined–up view of how CSR07 efficiency savings in Government contact centres will be delivered and linking delivery of relevant PSA targets to pan–government customer contact objectives;
- Setting standards, best practices and performance targets for Government’s contact business.
Role of Members
Council members function as a self–empowered team, in which individuals:
- Contribute to the development of the Council’s agenda on contact issues, particularly in cross–cutting areas, and personally champion these back in their own organisations and wider areas of influence;
- Take a cross Government view whilst maintaining accountability for specific operations and programmes in their area;
- Facilitate and encourage learning from each other, and from each other’s organisations;
- Develop their staff as professional assets for the public services as a whole, and devote a significant part of their personal time to developing the next generation.
Operating Model
The Council has the following characteristics:
- The Council reports to, and takes its remit from, the Delivery Council;
- Council members take collective responsibility for communicating Council objectives to staff, customers and other stakeholders;
- The Contact Council is formally linked to the Delivery Council by the appointment of the Contact Council chair (TBD) to the Delivery Council;
- appointments are personal to the individual (rather than to the organisation) and will be made in agreement with relevant Delivery Council members and their equivalents in the wider public sector. Members should attend meetings in person, with deputies not normally allowed. Council Membership changes are exclusively the province of the Contact Council once it is established;
- members will be expected to seek a collective view on key topics and recommendations. To inform this, subsets of the Council might complete pieces of work between meetings for discussion and individual members will be expected to give a proportion of their time to this end;
- Working in parallel the Customer Insight Forum, Customer Group Directors and the Contact Council will provide both the formal structure and departmental resource to focus, in an unprecedented way, upon the needs of both citizens and businesses, and to drive customer–driven public sector service transformation.
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To get in touch with the Contact Council please email contactcouncil@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk.
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