Craven District Council

We have an ageing and rural population within Craven and we know that the digital divide is likely to significantly impact our residents. At the same time, demand for council services is increasing.

This is creating a perfect storm in which; the need to ensure digital services are as accessible as possible is crucial, if we are to continue offering the same standard of service despite increasing pressures and technology changes.

Self-service submissions for council services through our website represent less than 10% of all requests at present, compared to 60% telephone and 30% face-to-face. Our ambition is for 70% of interactions to be self-serve, 20% telephone and 10% face-to-face.

We know that users are keen to access services online and services also recognise the benefits arising from this in terms of freeing up their staff capacity and allowing them to focus on providing specialist advice but we wish to better understand why customers choose not to use an online service where there is one available; how to identify and create end-to-end digital services; and how we can better capture and understand customer needs and behaviour to inform the prioritisation of channel shift and digital service delivery