1. Putting Customer Insight Into
Practice
Peter Gadsdon
Head Of Strategy & Performance, London
Borough Of Lewisham
19 March 2012

2. Using Customer Insight To Drive Improvement
Customer insight is… Customer focus is…
A deep ‘truth’ about the customer based on their About refocusing services around the needs of
behaviour, experiences, beliefs or needs that is the citizen as a customer of public services,
relevant to the task or issue and ‘rings bells with rather than the problems of those who provide
target people’ the services. It signifies an organisational culture
that aims to address the needs, expectations
and behaviours of the public, and then adjusts
every aspect of the organisation to align with
customer values
CUSTOMER FOCUS SHOULD DRIVE SERVICE IMPROVEMENT – CUSTOMER INSIGHT SHOULD
DRIVE CUSTOMER FOCUS
Frontline Staff Segmentation Website Focus Groups Usability Testing
Interviews
Customer insight methodologies are
designed to gather data and information Sketching/Rich
Ethnography which can give us a deeper understanding Picturing
of customers needs, wants, expectations,
behaviours and experiences CRM/Data
Mystery Systems
Shopping Customer Service Area
Social Media
Journey Maps Data

3. Customer Insight & Efficiency
EFFICIENCY DRIVERS CUSTOMER FOCUS DRIVERS CUSTOMER INSIGHT METHODOLOGIES
How can we work together with Understand ‘true behaviours’ using
Shape Demand customers to encourage behavioural ethnography, use ongoing dialogue
change? to encourage mutual change
When are the peaks and troughs in Watch trends, gather data, probe
Economies Of Flow customer demand? customers to understand patterns
What activities in a process add Customer journey mapping to
Reduce Waste In System value for the customers and which identify journey steps and value from
do not? the customer perspective
Where do customers want services Rich picturing to get customers
Optimise Resources to be delivered and what kind of involved in designing their own
buildings do they need? environment
What other services do customers Use journey mapping to understand
Economies Of Scale interdependencies/rich picturing to
access and where are the overlaps?
create a route map for change
Optimise Procurement Who do customers want to be Dialogue through interactive
delivering services to them? workshops – journey mapping
Policy Changes What do customers think we could Gather insights using all
stop or ration? methodologies and open debate

4. Using Customer Insight To Achieve Cultural Change
Customer insight is a powerful tool which helps to…
• Persuade decision makers to implement a change
• Lead and galvanize support for doing things differently
• Influence the behaviours of staff
Customer insight works because…
• It is visual, engaging and different
• It talks about experiences and emotional responses
• It offers a new perspective in defining/assessing value in
service delivery
• It is not the interpreted view of an officer, but comes
straight from the customer’s mouth

5. Case Study 1– The Design Council
Restructure & Relocation
• Developed a preventative service delivery model that
places the customer at the centre
• Redefined roles & responsibilities and renamed the service
‘Housing Options’
• Redesigned processes around the needs of the customers
e.g. initial contact
• Revised policies and procedures to embed new ways of
working & cement a cultural shift (both our staff &
customers) e.g. Allocations Policy
Public Services By Design Programme
• Response to ‘Innovation Nation’ White Paper
• Design Council challenged to help government create
services that are cost effective & connect public to heart of
policy making
• Lewisham made a successful bid in 2009/10 – implementing
a design approach to improve the experiences of people
using emergency housing services

6. Step 1 – Identifying Customers & Their Needs
Staff From Across Housing Needs Came Together To Discuss…
Who are our customer groups are…
What the specific needs of these
groups are…
What works well and where there
are problems with the customer and
staff experience…

7. Step 2 – Involving Staff
What We Did…
• Created a project group to enable staff-led
change
• Looked at examples of how videos can be used
to capture customer views & shape change in
other settings
• Trained how to use videos as a tool to collect
customer insights
• Practised using video & interviewing customers
in a ‘safe’ environment – learning & refining
skills before go live

8. Step 3 – Gathering Customer & Partner Insights

9. Step 4 – Identifying Themes & Sketching Ideas
What We Found Out…
• Expectations
• Gaps in the system
• Understanding and interacting with
our customers
• Explaining the process
• Empowering our customers
• Simplifying the system
• Working together

10. Step 5 – Prototyping & Testing
What It Is… What We Came Up With…
• Prototyping means we can develop 1. Getting It Right First Time
ideas quickly and cheaply
2. Cartoon Case Studies
• It gives us a practical example to use to 3. What Next Doc
test how our ideas work in practice 4. Fact Sheets
• Our customers can give us feedback
which will help us improve our ideas
• Our solution will be tried & tested and
therefore more workable
• Pick first four easy ideas to implement

11. Step 6 – Developing The Innovation Pipeline
Learning/Achievements
• Efficiency savings of £368,000 have been achieved against design project investment of
£7,000
• Embedded film as a tool within our service transformation methodology to capture & use
customer insight to create buy-in and commitment for change
• Real experiences, real lives – provides a detailed understanding of strengths, gaps &
opportunities with our services
• Forces us to think differently and encourages us to act
Design And Innovation Is Not A One Off Exercise
• More staff…
• More insights…
• More ideas and prototypes…

12. Case Study 2: Homelessness & Community Budgets
• Community Budgets aims to find new, radical ways of working with families who have complex
needs by pooling/aligning resources across partnerships – Lewisham is one of 16 first phase areas
Many families targeted through Community
Our Approach
1. High Needs 2. Families With
Families Offenders Budgets are likely to have housing
issues e.g. homelessness, ASB, rent
arrears – we cannot tackle wider
problems successfully if they do not
have stable base
3. Workless
Families
Tackling Homelessness
• Temporary Accommodation Project, developed from the ideas
generated from the insights in the Design Council project, on preventing
homelessness and improving life chances for families with complex
needs in temporary accommodation
• Opportunity to use homelessness as the route into these families’ lives,
complementing and supporting existing Community Budgets work

13. Step 1 – Prototyping A Short Stay Assessment Centre
THE AIM: Reduce the usage & costs of nightly paid accommodation
• Expensive option – £300K per year overspend on B&B accommodation; unsustainable if
homeless approaches increase
• Poor performance – dependency on B&B caused by delays in decision making and lack of
longer-term opportunities for move-on
• Negative experience for customers – instability, disruption to family life, impact on health
and welfare (Insights)
THE SOLUTION: Use existing Council assets in a radically different way to establish a short stay assessment
centre for homeless households
• Produced detailed profile of hostel stock and
households in TA to determine ideal match for
assessment centre
• Developed decant strategy to move-on existing 011
r2
residents to alternative accommodation, supported by
m be
additional RSL temp lets pte
H : Se
• Undertook ‘model fit-out’ of one unit to test whether C
UN
it saves time/money & converted other units to LA
enable flexible use
• Worked with frontline staff to co-produce new
operational model designed around needs of
customers and streamlined end-end process

14. Outcomes So Far
What Did We Want To See?
• Intensive focus on homeless families – wraparound support and holistic assessment of needs
during stay (not just part vii investigations), establish early intervention partnership working
to help households tackle more complex social challenges
• Better management of demand – promote upfront housing options and prevention pathway,
targeted diversionary strategies to those at risk of eviction, reduce repeat contact
• Efficiency savings (c.£150K-£200K) – reinvest in longer-term strategic approaches to tackle
root causes of homelessness
THEN NOW
B&B Numbers 78 (May 2011) 39 (Feb 2012)
Overspend £249K £187K
Open Cases 188 (Dec 2011) 89 (Feb 2012)
Behavioural
• However, the key ingredient to achieving long-lasting, effective change is to focus
Change
on the customer themselves and understand their experiences, behaviour and
perceptions of the homelessness service

15. Step 2 – More Customer Insight
What Did We Want To Do?
• Develop a detailed picture of key customer groups, particularly
those with complex needs
• Focus on their experiences, aspirations & barriers to achievement
• Better understanding of the customer journey & the
triggers/predictors for homelessness
• Use insights to further improve assessment centre & whole service
What Have We Done So Far?
• Commissioned a social research company to support project and
provide expert guidance
• Established project team (5 frontline officers from across the
housing service) & worked with them to identify key customer
archetypes
• Conducted in-depth, ethnographic research with 5 customers over
4-5 weeks + currently undertaking staff led interviews with wider
range of customers

16. Our Focus…
A family who have
Ethnographic Films
A family recently A family with
gained/lost access to received a negative
complex needs decision
public funds (Sophia)
(Leanne) (Miriam)
An individual with
A young, single adult complex needs/dual
(Oscar) diagnosis
(Charles)
Staff-Led Interviews
Parental Evictions Friend/Family Legal Evictions From Legal Evictions From
Evictions Private Rented Sector Social Housing
Domestic Violence National Asylum Illegal Eviction Or Single Vulnerable
Service Cases Landlord Harassment Clients
• Refine insights into short film & accompanying document highlighting key themes and issues
Next Steps
• Ideas generation workshops with frontline staff, senior managers & other stakeholders to
develop creative solutions
• Embed behavioural changes amongst customers, prevent homelessness from becoming a
further contributor to a lifecycle of dependency

17. Lewisham & The Looking Up Model
• The Shaftesbury Partnership are working with Lewisham and several other authorities to
undertake some of the initial design work for their Looking Up Model
Most vulnerable,
problematic, known to more
than 1 agency
Don’t fit easily with a Focus on adults with Excluded from services
particular service area, multiple/complex needs due to challenging
existing services (‘gap’ in Community behaviour, fall between
struggle to support Budgets work) statutory thresholds
Review of existing
Case study with 20-50 Business case & financial
budgetary/commissioning
households model
frameworks

18. Lewisham & The Looking Up Model (Shaftsbury partnership)
Improved outcomes
Health /
Support treatment
solutions solutions
Person
Other ad hoc
solutions /
Living solutions extras
Relationship
Community resources
Lead
Public sector resources: person
•Local authority
•NHS Single
•DWP budget Additional resources:
•CJS Looking Up philanthropy, private sector
£

19. Putting Customer Insight Into
Practice
Peter Gadsdon
Head Of Strategy & Performance, London
Borough Of Lewisham
19 March 2012