building a new website scarborough borough council

Building a New Website

Scarborough Borough Council


WWW.SCARBOROUGH.GOV.UK

• Born of the e-government era• Old commercial software• Old expensive server• Not mobile• Too big• Difficult to maintain• Reduced resource• No external access• Online services restricted to email forms and a few

payments



• Mobile first• Open source• Cloud hosted• Smaller• 24/7 editor access• End to end services



• Based heavily on GOV.UK• Our version was given the thumbs up by Tom

Loosemore, Deputy Director of the GDS and Ben Terrett, Director of Design at the GDS



• Time (or lack of)• Get most things right• Target high-volume, transactional services• Reduce waffle• Fewer hands/more consistency• Fail quickly/fix quickly• Experience• Trust• Common sense

Demo of self-service portal and DASH



Self serving

• Self • Public portal onto Firmstep • Customer raises cases• View all their Cases• Customer Services also have view• Waste Collection App• Council Tax Balances• Coming Soon:

• NDR• Updated case status

• DASH (Internal Self)• Officers raise cases• Officers continue cases• Officers can close cases

Self Service – promoting ‘channel-shift’



Telephone greeting

The vast majority of contact with Scarborough Borough Council is made over the telephone. So …

Our main greeting message was changed to incorporate the ‘Do it Online’ key message.


Customer contacts

Customer First staff who deal directly with residents over the phoneor face-to-face allows usto promote our online channels. So …

Customers are being asked if they would like to be set up with a self-service account.


Scarborough Customer First

With the majority of face-to-face enquiries coming in via the Scarborough Customer First Centre, we wanted to use the space to promote ‘Do it Online’ and self-service. So …

We created a new slideshow for Customer First and Civic Reception with a heavy emphasis on ‘Do it Online’; and put new decals on the Customer First windows to promote our website.


Self-service leaflets

After launching the new website and self-service portal and giving it a little time to bed in, we were eager to tell our customers about it and get people to sign up for self-service accounts. So …

We produced a ‘Do it Online’ leaflet for people visiting Customer First and other offices / venues.


Letters, etc

We wanted to present a more modern image of our council. So …

We redesigned our letterhead,compliments slips and business cards. We continue to work with Services to incorporate the new artwork on letters that are automatically generated.


Helping information to ‘stick’

Staff dealing with customers face-to-face often need to write out phone numbers or other important information for people. So …

We produced some ‘sticky’ notepads for Customer First staff to use. They contain the key ‘Do it Online’ message and are in line with other branded materials.


Corporate email signatures

Over the past few years, there looks to have been a scattergun approach to email signatures, with house style seemingly ignored. So …

We are re-establishing a corporate template while crowbarring in some key ‘online’ messages.


Bin collection calendar

Refuse collection is a Service delivered to every household in the Borough. So …

We made sure we included some signposting to our website on the bin collection calendar distributed each year.


Opportunity to use bin lorries

Our bin lorries reachevery part of theBorough. So …

We negotiated withour colleagues in Cleansing Services to get some space on their bin wagons to promote the ‘Do it Online’ message as well as our social media channels.


56,000 A5 council tax ‘inserts’

With 56,000 Council Tax billssent out to every household, the chance to promote self-service in the same mailshot was too good an opportunity to miss. So …

We inserted a ‘Do it Online’ flyer with the bills.


What’s next

• More ‘assisted digital’ in Customer First• 2,000 fridge magnets for distribution• Training to Housing Association staff (Yorkshire

Coast Homes)• Digital Inclusion Partnership• More online cross promotion• Funding bids to expand peer-to-peer digital

projects

building a new website scarborough borough council

Documents

gds slide

trust common sense slide

online message

online leaflet

online channels

selfservice accounts

end services

demo of selfservice