Meeting last week, city council approved Greater Sudbury's new customer service strategy, titled “Respect. Excellence. Connection. Service,” to be implemented between 2019 and 2022.
The plan recognizes the importance of “employees and citizens in the customer service experience,” the city said in a news release, and will be the basis over the next four years in shaping the city’s service culture.
“The development and approval of our organization’s first customer service strategy is a significant step toward the consistent delivery of service excellence that our residents deserve and expect,” Mayor Brian Bigger is quoted as saying in the news release. “We have made a lot of progress in improving our service delivery and look forward to continuing the positive momentum through the implementation of the actions outlined in the Customer Service Strategy.”
The strategy focuses on three areas, the release said. The first, building a service culture, “aims to build and enhance the organization’s capacity to provide great customer service, every time,” the release said.
“The second, enhancing service effectiveness, supports ongoing measurement and improvement in customer service delivery, as well as enhanced capacity to resolve issues at the first point of contact.
“Actions supporting the third focus area, service simply accessed, revolve around ensuring that citizens have access to the service channels of their choice.”
“As a provider of municipal services, council and city staff recognize that positive customer experiences are at the core of our mandate,” said city CAO Ed Archer in the release. “This first enterprise-wide customer service strategy sets us on a path to establish, measure against, and improve on consistent practices that will benefit service providers and users alike.”
An implementation plan for the strategy is under development, with a focus for 2019 on training, education, technology support, and improvements in the 311 call centre.
The full customer service strategy is available at www.greatersudbury.ca/customerservicestrategy.
