East Riding of Yorkshire Council will explore opportunities to use social media like Facebook and Twitter as a possible additional route for residents’ feedback as it seeks to maintain its consistently high response rates and improve customer happiness around how complaints are handled.
The council’s cabinet today approved plans for council officers to assess the use of additional feedback channels to make feedback as easy as possible.
In the last 5 years, the council has attained a very high rate, presently 98 per cent, in answering customers complaints within the guideline of 10 business days wherever they occur across the councils services.
As well as considering the use of social media platforms, such as Twitter, to reply to residents in real-time, the council will also look to establish mystery shopping programmes across council sites to discover how accessible the feedback system is, promote the Tell Us How It Is text message service and carry out an update of the customer satisfaction survey, to assess whether residents find the feedback process easy to access and fit for purpose.
Councillor Jonathan Owen, cabinet portfolio holder for transformation and strategic partnerships at East Riding of Yorkshire Council, said: “The proposals to update our feedback process to use new technology to engage with our residents is excellent news and forms a key part of our transformation programme to reduce costs while at the same time improving service delivery.
“The council takes pride in its high response rate and that the vast majority of responses are welcomed by those commenting. The council also receives a high amount of compliments through its feedback channels, with six compliments for every complaint.
“We recognise that additional feedback channels could see an increase in complaints but do not be regard this as a negative. Customer feedback at a time of change is vital to understand how residents feel about changes to services and allow the council to constantly improve what it offers.
“By ensuring our feedback policy is up-to-date, robust and responsive to new technology we can make sure that the services we provide to our residents continue to be of a high-standard and well-received. Where any themes emerge relevant action can be taken.”
