Customer service at Kingborough Council needs dramatic improvement. That is widely acknowledged, including by the CEO himself, who has publicly stated his desire to lift our customer service responses. I want to partner with him and the senior leadership team to make that ambition real.
My role as Mayor will not be to sit in judgement from outside the tent. It will be to lead the push for council to properly support the CEO and senior staff in delivering the customer service culture our community deserves. That means backing them with the governance, resourcing, and political will to drive change, and holding ourselves accountable as elected members for creating the conditions in which that change can happen.
I want to be precise about where the problem sits. Residents consistently praise our front-counter staff, often by name, and so do I. What residents describe as failing is not the people at the counter. It is the departments, the processes and the culture behind them. Customer service reform is about fixing that system, so that the staff who already do the right thing are backed by one that works.
- Work with the CEO to establish measurable customer service standards with public reporting
- Back the CEO and senior team with the council level support they need to drive cultural change
- Create a dedicated concierge function for planning and development enquiries
- Set response time guarantees for all resident enquiries
- Publish complaints and query data promptly. Data that takes six to nine months to surface is history, not management information
- Collect a satisfaction score after every interaction and report it publicly
- Fix the Questions on Notice process, where answers are too often minimal, deferred, or never followed up
- Build a staff culture that guides ratepayers and developers on the most efficient way to achieve their goals, not merely assess what is placed in front of them
- Deliver simpler, clearer, and fairer processes across planning, approvals, and service delivery. Residents should not need a consultant or a lawyer to understand what council expects of them
Customer service transformation is also about realising the benefits of council’s Digital Strategy Plan. That strategy sets out how innovative technology and AI reforms will be embedded into council operations to support our staff to work more effectively and efficiently, with quicker approvals and speedier responses. Delivering on the strategy’s goals will make council more agile and save ratepayer money, while directly supporting the customer service agenda set out in this priority.
