Wednesday 12 July 2017
Today the States of Guernsey is launching its new Customer Charter, which emphasises providing a service that is quick, easy, accessible, value for money, friendly, helpful, and meets the needs of the whole community.
This is an opportunity for public sector staff to focus on what is important to their customers, and for the community to offer feedback on the level of customer service they expect from the wide variety of public services delivered. The Customer Charter sets out the level of customer service expected from government services.
The Charter promises the States of Guernsey will strive to deliver services that are:
- Courteous and fair: Our service will be friendly and give fair and equal treatment to all our customers, whilst respecting their individual needs and expectations
- Timely and efficient: We will respond as quickly as we can and strive to get it right first time.
- Accessible and provide choice: We will make sure that important information is available in a range of formats and is easy to understand.
- Accurate and relevant: We will make sure that we provide up to date, correct information about our services and you can easily speak to staff with the knowledge and training to help you.
- Provide the opportunity to give feedback and be heard: We will ask for islanders' feedback on the service they receive and use this to help improve our services
The Customer Charter applies to all services delivered by the States of Guernsey, with the ultimate aim being the delivery of excellent customer care regardless of the service area the public engage with. As the work carried out by each service area varies so greatly, some will also set more specific service standards of their own.
Jason Moriarty, States of Guernsey Chief Operating Officer, said:
"The purpose of the Customer Charter is to make sure that the all of our teams strive to continuously improve the customer service we deliver, whether that be by moving more of our services online for ease of use or changing our processes so we keep you informed at every stage. The Charter will sit alongside a complaints process that is being re-worked, standardised and simplified.
Improving the customer focus of public services has been a key emphasis of the States of Guernsey for a number of years. Whether it's introducing a new easy to use appointment system for parent's evenings, improving the signage at the Princess Elizabeth Hospital, translating quick guides into other languages for those members of our community where English is a second language, or improving the facilities at the airport, putting the public as a customer at the heart of everything we do is crucial if the States is to continue to provide quality and timely services to the community. We have also made Disability Awareness training available for all staff to ensure that we respond to disabled islanders appropriately and with flexibility to different physical and sensory needs..
The results from the 2015 Community Survey and the follow up Customer Service survey showed us that, although we have some really excellent examples of Customer Service, including the three outstanding members of our team who were recently shortlisted for the Sure Customer Service Award, there are some areas where improvement is required.
As an organisation we already collect a number of customer satisfaction measures. We will be building on this and using the Charter to be more open and transparent about how we are doing in terms of customer service.
By the end of 2017 we aim to have five pilot areas reporting on their performance against the Charter in order to help us identify and monitor improvements. The measures are currently being developed for online income tax returns, the Job Centre within Employment & Social Security, Driver and Vehicle Licensing within Traffic & Highway Services, billing in Guernsey Water and Beau Sejour. Once these have been developed we will using the gov.gg website and social media to let our customers know how we are doing."
The Customer Charter can be downloaded from www.gov.gg/customercharter. If you have any questions about the charter or would like to provide some feedback on your experiences of customer service please email customerservice@gov.gg or call 01481 717000.
