Customer Services for London

The Customer Services for London Group (CSLG) was set-up in 2004. It is chaired by Ray Brown, Head of Customer Services at Kensington and Chelsea. Its objectives are to:

1)     Improve efficiency, effectiveness and value for money through

• Improved customer services processes and practices
• Joint working and procurement
• Comparison and benchmarking

2)     Share best practice so that London Boroughs can learn from each other’s experience

3)     Improve customer focus by encouraging cooperation and partnership working across London

4)     Identify and encourage innovation in Customer Services.

All London boroughs, as well as some other public sector organisations, are represented on the CSLG. It has two main strands of activity

1)     Plenary meetings for information dissemination, discussion and networking. These are held quarterly and are typically attended by 40-50 public sector customer services managers and professionals.

2)     Individual projects. Current projects being run or sponsored by the CSLG include

• Customer satisfaction and mystery shopping. The CSLG undertakes regular comparisons between many boroughs across London.
• Benchmarking. Since the autumn of 2007, the CSLG has been collecting contact centre benchmarking information from several London boroughs.
• Developing an efficiency calculator. This software was developed for the CSLG. It contains an Erlang algorithm and helps authorities develop, plan and improve the performance of their contact centres and other access channels.
• Pan London customer insight. Following a seminar on 13 February 2008 attended by about 75 customer services managers and other professionals, the CSLG is developing a proposal for a customer insight project to be of benefit across London.
• Staff training. The CSLG has sponsored a number of courses aimed at customer services supervisors and those involved in managing change in customer services.
• Out-of-Hours services. London Connects and the CSLG sponsored a project to develop a business case for a London-wide out-of-hours service. There was found to be much interest and an Invitation to Tender was developed. Procurement is currently in progress.

If you would like more information, please contact either Tim Abbott ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) or Ray Brown, Head of Customer Services at Kensington and Chelsea, ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) who chairs the group.

Relevant Documents 

Customer Management and Insight in Government

Communities & Local Government – Customer Insight

Customer Insight Seminar - Mary Tetlow

Customer Insight Seminar - TfL

Planning and Running a Customer Insight Project - RSe consulting

Targeting home fire safety checks - LFB

The Barnet Experience

The Journey Mapping Guidance - Cabinet Office