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LB Lewisham uses drama-based training to improve customer service

The London Borough of Lewisham has used drama-based training to help it provide a consistently high level of customer service across all of its directorates.

"In the past, it has been difficult to provide a consistent level of customer service throughout the authority because people work in different areas, in different circumstances," said Sharon Wilkins, Manager of LB Lewisham’s Front Line Academy, a virtual group which runs change initiatives for front line staff. "Residents, however, see the council as one organisation, so it is important that our service level is the same across all directorates."

To provide guidance on what is expected of staff, 18 representatives from the Front Line Academy, in consultation with colleagues, devised a set of corporate customer service standards that could be adopted across the council and promoted to customers as a 'promise' of good service, regardless of which service they access or whether they make contact face-to-face or via the telephone.

The standards include eight service principles relating to behaviour - such as being respectful, courteous and sensitive to individual needs - as well as three more traditional performance promises.

"We decided to launch these standards at a conference for our front line staff," said Sharon Wilkins. "We approached Steps Drama because we wanted to bring alive the standards and get the message across in a way that engaged staff. Steps Drama understand learning and development and they’ve got a lot of experience of working with local authorities."

The one-day conference was held at the borough council’s civic suite. Around 130 front line staff attended, filling the capacity of the venue.

The Steps Drama session ran for an hour and three quarters. Three actor-facilitators role played a range of customer service scenarios, highlighting difficult customer service interactions and the rationale for introducing a set of standards that apply to everyone.

"With Steps Drama, the interactive nature of their work is very entertaining and the quality of their delivery is always excellent," said Sharon Wilkins. "Feedback showed that the conference was a great success. If we’d just sent out leaflets saying these are the customer service standards you have to live by, people would’ve been less inclined to take the messages on board. Because staff had an opportunity to contribute and discuss the points raised in the Steps Drama scenarios, they bought into the reasons why the customer service standards were needed."

Following the event, the managers of Lewisham’s Call Point (corporate call centre) and Access Point (one-stop shop for customers) asked Steps Drama to run a similar session for all of their staff at their annual departmental conference. Steps Drama ran two one-hour slots at the event and nearly 200 people attended.

While Steps Drama were preparing the workshop for the Front Line Academy conference, the council asked them to help with a recruitment exercise.

A new-style assessment day had been arranged, as part of the process of recruiting customer-facing staff in the Call Point and Access Point services. The idea was to filter down 200 applicants using communications exercises, an observation exercise and a written skills test.

Steps Drama worked with the council and two actors delivered a range of scenarios, making deliberate customer service mistakes, in a face-to-face environment. These scenarios were filmed by the council’s in-house communications unit, who then produced a seven-minute video.

The council took over a theatre in Lewisham for two days, for the assessments. The video was screened to 100 applicants per day and each had to write down the points of poor service they noticed.

"Some of the deliberate mistakes made were very funny and others were very subtle," said Sharon Wilkins. "The assessment process helped to weed out unsuitable candidates and those who were successful went through to the interview stage."

The London Borough of Lewisham is currently in discussion with Steps Drama about two additional customer service events for its Social Care & Health and Education & Culture directorates. It is also considering including drama-based learning in the customer focus module of its management development programme.

Abi George, LB Lewisham’s Head of Service Development, said: "The customer service initiatives have already helped us to become more effective and more focussed. Publishing our standards has raised the public’s expectations about our service. The challenge now is to ensure we deliver a high level of satisfaction."

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