web performance must improve to achieve cost-saving channel shift
6 Sep 2010 12:35 PM
Web performance must improve to achieve cost-saving channel shift says Socitm’s latest half-yearly review from the Customer Access Improvement Service
Performance data from Socitm’s latest Customer Access Improvement Service briefing shows that the web channel is not currently performing well enough to encourage the degree of channel shift required to impact significantly on councils’ costs of delivering information and services to customers.
Socitm’s Customer Access Improvement Service briefing issue 4 provides results from three different services that monitor take up and performance of the most important customer access channels used by customers to access council services. These are Socitm’s Website Takeup and Channel Value Benchmarking services, and the GovMetric service.
The latest data from the Channel Value Benchmarking service, which works with groups of councils to benchmark the costs and value of different access channels, puts the comparative cost to councils per enquiry at £7.40 for face-to-face, £2.90 for the telephone and just £0.32 for web enquiries.
However, GovMetric data shows that, despite being the busiest channel, the web gives by far the least satisfactory performance, with 42% of visitors rating it as poor, compared with 15% of face-to-face visitors and just 1% of callers by phone.
The main reason for dissatisfaction with the web is failure of visitors to find what they are looking for. This is likely to lead to significant levels of avoidable contact as visitors go to other, more expensive channels (predominantly the phone, according to information from the Website Takeup service) for answers to their enquiries.
The Website take-up service shows that in May 2010 on average 20.74% of visitors failed to find what they were looking for on the web and that another 21.28% only found part of that. This equates to up to 32,000 failed web visits per month for single tier (or county) councils and up to 8,000 for shire districts. In financial terms, it is possible to use these figures to estimate that up to £17m extra cost is incurred by councils each month as visitors take additional enquiries to mediated channels that they might have ‘self-serviced’ on the web.
The briefing also points out that this problem of failure to complete tasks is getting worse, increased by 5.3% in the past 12 months. Net visitor satisfaction with websites has dropped by 3.2% and by over 28% in two years.
‘Our data continues to show how much cheaper the web channel can be than going through an intermediary, such as the phone call or the visit to the one-stop shop’ says Martin Greenwood, programme manager for Socitm Insight. ‘However, channel shift online will only work if websites work right first time and every time. Information from Socitm’s Better connected survey suggests under-investment in the web is the cause of its current low performance and this needs to change. Investment in the web that will reap significant returns because of the potential to reduce the cost of meeting customer enquiries.
The Customer Access Improvement Service Briefing Issue 4 is available to subscribers to Socitm’s Website Takeup Service and to Socitm Insight subscribers, who may download copies from the Socitm website www.socitm.net.
Further information
Vicky Sargent, Socitm Press Office
Tel: 07726 601 139 email: vicky.sargent@socitm.net
Martin Greenwood, Programme Manager, Socitm Insight
Tel: 01926 498703 or 07967 383755 e-mail: martin.greenwood@socitm.net