Mystery Customers

Why are we doing this?

Local authorities provide a range of customer services, but unlike with private sector suppliers, tenants and leaseholders are not normally in the position of being able to choose an alternative provider. However, poor levels of service can still damage customer satisfaction, and anyone who has had a bad experience will often tell others about it, thereby spreading negative perceptions. We would like to use this initiative to engage with you, monitor satisfaction and demonstrate how engagement can make a difference in practise.

As a proactive Council, we want to know what it is like to be a customer of our services, to gain insight into what you expect and the level of service that you receive. Our Mystery Customers programme will measure our services with the aim of improving satisfaction and your overall experience by continually and consistently capturing your feedback.

It is vitally important that our services are easily accessed by our tenants and leaseholders. We need to make sure we are responding to queries promptly and providing the right information. You will play a vital role in ensuring that we are doing just that.

How does it work?

Each time you interact with Dacorum Borough Council or use one of our services, you will complete the questionnaire below to record how we did. For example, you could let us know how long it took us to answer the call or respond and how the request was dealt with. We can implement any suggestions made to ensure our services operate more effectively. Each completed questionnaire will automatically enter you into our quarterly prize draw.

Your Mystery Customers feedback will be used to recommend where improvements can be made, as we are constantly striving to improve the services that we deliver to our customers. Each time a questionnaire is completed, we will collate the findings and feedback any issues or compliments to the relevant service managers.

Mystery Customers is different from our satisfaction surveys in that it explores your experience at a snapshot in time (rather than asking for your views retrospectively) and records specific details of that particular experience. As such, it can be a very powerful tool to highlight clear action points for improving our services.

What is Mystery Customers?

• A method for exploring your experiences when reporting issues or interacting with Dacorum Borough Council
• Your view at a snapshot in time
• Carried out in a variety of ways (can be done face-to-face, by telephone, by letter, by email, by surfing the web, by contacting us via social media)
• A way of identifying strengths and weaknesses in dealing with customers
• A method of measuring performance against set service standards
• A useful aid for identifying training needs
• A chance for you to provide open, honest, objective and constructive feedback

What is in it for you?

• Each completed questionnaire will automatically enter you into our quarterly prize draw.
• Opportunities to attend free training sessions and courses
• Mystery Customer exercises can be undertaken at a time that is convenient for you and should not take long
• Quarterly newsletter sharing your findings, spotlighting your good work, announcing prize draw winners and informing you about any improvements we have made
• Opportunities to attend focus groups, open days, conferences & other events

What difference will this make?

• Improvements in the way queries are handled
• Changes to the information shown on the website and highlighting any information gaps
• Improvements in the way that information is communicated
• Recommendations being adopted in our policies and procedures
• Improved accessibility on different devices
• Additional training may be provided to staff

Register