Challenge
Aarhus Municipality wanted to get closer to their citizens. In the past they collected telephone numbers and called around asking a few questions. But there was never any structure, follow-up, or actual benefit from it. Therefore, they wanted a solution translated to public administration to measure and collect feedback.
Solution
In a collaboration with Anders Rønnebech and nps.today, a measurement solution for the municipality became reality. Integrated to their existing telephony system. From this a solution was created for the public administration, the Borger (citizen) Image Score.
Result
The overall experience is that all employees now are aware of the conversations, follow along on the dashboards and have begun to ask for extensions into other departments. Of course, the municipality has learned and is still learning about what the citizens demand instead of guessing.
P-GAP creates feedback culture in Aarhus
In Aarhus Municipality, citizen feedback has been completely increased. As the first municipality in the country, Aarhus Municipality now listens to the citizen’s voice via BIS (Citizen Image Score), where the purpose is to get closer to the citizen.
Borger (Citizen) Image Score is based on Net Promoter Score and P-GAP (Perception Gap) and has become a reality in a collaboration between Vibeke Bech, head of Citizen service Aarhus Municipality, and customer experience expert Anders Rønnebech, who has also developed P-GAP. P-GAP is about understanding the distance between the employee’s and the citizen’s experience and cultivating the learning that can close the distance.
“BASED ON YOUR EXPERIENCE IN CITIZEN SERVICE, TO WHAT EXTENT DO YOU WANT TO MENTION CITIZEN SERVICE POSITIVELY TO OTHERS?”
This is the question citizens today are faced with when they have been in contact with Citizen Service in Aarhus Municipality.
We wanted to measure citizens’ satisfaction in a new way in order to get closer to our citizens. In the past, we have collected telephone numbers and called around and asked some questions
Vibeke Bech already knew about both NPS and P-GAP, and wanted a solution translated into public administration. Therefore, she contacted Anders Rønnebech. In a joint collaboration with nps.today, where we provide a measurement solution with integration to the municipality’s telephony system, Borger Image Score became a reality. The solution has been such a great success that it is now being rolled out in several of the municipality’s departments.
It is important that we measure the experience, but also that we do something about it. Do we provide the good service we think we do? We get insight into that now
Positive publicity versus loyalty
When the public sector measures Image instead of loyalty, it is of course about the fact that if you are dissatisfied with the service you experience at a private company, you can relatively easily change supplier. But if you are dissatisfied with the service in your municipality, there is not much else to do but move
He points out that there is a colossal difference between the private and the public sector, both culturally and also when talking about employees who are employed in customer service and Citizen Service, respectively. All this is something BIS addresses. And the fact that the citizens have welcomed the municipality’s new interest in them shows the high number of responses.
BIS increases employee engagement and competencies
The contact center’s employees have welcomed the new everyday life.
I have matured the project for two years, and when we started it, we had Anders on the field to reassure the employees that there was nothing dangerous about it
She elaborates that there has been some sport in it with regard to the measurements, and this has increased employee engagement. She experiences that they are aware of their own conversations, follow dashboards hanging in Citizen Service, and that the employees have begun to ask for extensions to other departments. In short, the commitment is contagious, and it is a good way to develop competence. Good learning for us leaders when we think that the citizens demand on the right, but it turns out to be on the left.
More Citizen, less system
Vibeke Bech is satisfied with the simplicity with NPS, and all the feedback they get in the comment, where the citizen has the opportunity to share the reason for the score, uses Aarhus Municipality to better understand the citizen.
We provide a good service in Aarhus Municipality, and we solve our core task well. BIS has helped to confirm this. The simplicity of the solution that we are pioneering is in line with the Aarhus Compass and aimed at ‘Smaller system. More citizens ’. It strengthens our focus on what has value for citizens and society.
Aarhus Municipality is currently measuring at Borgerservice, but the next step is to measure driving license, library and collection calls.
“After all, no one calls the municipality just to say ‘hello’. Citizens must experience that we do our utmost to solve their challenges in the best possible way. And the employees experience that the citizens recognize their work. We often find that they say ‘thank you for the help’. I hope that what we are doing here in Aarhus, spreads and spreads on the overall picture of the public image, so that it also makes us an attractive workplace. It is a change of culture. Everything that comes from inside and out is contagious”, concludes Vibeke Bech.
About Aarhus Municipality
- Aarhus Municipality is located in East Jutland and is Denmarks second largest based on the number of citizens.
- From their wish of getting a solution for the public administration the Borger (citizen) Image Score was created in collaboration with nps.today and Anders Rønnebech