Redesign Services
Using customer feedback to redesign services
Services can be redesigned for many different reasons – to cut costs, to improve coordination with other services, or to meet emerging social, environmental and economic needs, for example.
Customer-focused service redesign delivers these results and more.
Services that are redesigned to meet customer needs and to improve the service experience and service outcomes for customers commonly deliver greater customer satisfaction with the way the service is provided; better outcomes for customers; greater employee satisfaction; more effective services; reductions in costs, delays, waste, rework and congestion; and better economic, social and environmental outcomes for the community.
This handbook gives service providers in the NSW public sector an introduction to service redesign that will increase customer satisfaction with government services and deliver better outcomes for our communities. It considers what needs to be changed to improve customer satisfaction with government services, and how these service changes can be implemented.
The following key terms are used in this manual.
Customers
Service redesign will be improved if it is based on the views and experiences of:
- Customers who are currently using the service.
- Past customers who have used the service previously, but who are not currently using the service.
- People who are eligible to receive the service but who have not done so.
- Likely future customers.
Stakeholders are people who have an interest in the service (its objectives, operation, funding and outcomes) but who do not directly use the service. They include groups such as the parents of students who use education services, or the carers of patients who use support services. Stakeholder feedback can be useful when redesigning services – however this handbook focuses on improving services for customers.
Customer Feedback
Government departments have always used some form of customer feedback – to varying degrees – in the design and redesign of services. The most common forms of feedback, from the minimalist to the most comprehensive, include:
- Indirect feedback – Customers are not directly involved in giving feedback to the service. Indirect customer feedback includes measures of changes in rates of service patronage, service revenue and lengths of waiting lists.
- Consultation – Advice is sought from customers on a one-off or more frequent basis, and is used by service providers to redesign elements of the service. Types of consultation methods include measures of customer satisfaction, dissatisfaction and customer complaints, or having ongoing advice provided by a service Advisory Committee.
- Customer participation – Feedback based on customer participation is often ongoing, and includes service users being involved in the governance of the service (for example, through service Boards or Councils), participation in service evaluations and in making decisions about the design and delivery of the service.
- Customer co-production – Services that rely on the contributions of both the public sector professionals and the service “users” – they “co-produce” desired outcomes such as good health, a better environment or safe communities – use continuous feedback to identify and implement service redesign initiatives at the same time as they are co-producing the service.
- Feedback with user-directed services – Where customers direct and control the services (as occurs with various business and industry services, indigenous services, and services provided over the web) feedback includes measures of satisfaction with the way service providers provided advice, guidance and facilitation.
Detailed information on customer feedback techniques can be found in: Improving Customer Satisfaction with Government Services – Customer Feedback, the companion volume in this series of Performance Improvement handbooks.