Enfield Council is working on a plan to improve the way its staff serve residents and businesses.

Council officers have drawn up a four-year plan to improve customer experience by ensuring it is a key priority for all of its departments.

At a meeting of the overview and scrutiny committee last night (Wednesday, September 5), Kari Manovitch, director of customer experience and change, said the council’s previous strategy had focused on making savings and rolling out IT systems but that the customer had “got lost in the process”.

She said: “We are not delivering a consistently positive experience for our customers.

“The strategy is about seeking a framework that will guide the work that we do over the next four years.

“What this strategy says is customer experience is a priority. We will not succeed in delivering for residents of Enfield if we do not establish customer experience as a measure of success.”

The plan sets out ‘preferred behaviours’ from council staff – that they are friendly and helpful, honest and respectful, and professional and courteous.

Officers will use a maturity model to measure its success in improving customer experience, with five levels of achievement.

The council will use feedback from focus groups and surveys to measure customer satisfaction.

Its plan is designed to align with the council’s new corporate vision of “creating a lifetime of opportunities in Enfield”.

Councillors at the scrutiny committee welcomed the draft strategy’s ambitious scope but criticised its complexity.

Cllr Lee David-Sanders, Conservative member for Highlands ward, questioned why the five stages of improvement were also divided into bronze, silver and gold categories.

He said: “I think there needs to be a bit more ‘less is more’.”

Committee chairman and Labour member for Southgate Cllr Derek Levy suggested providing more scenarios to show how the strategy would work in practice.

The plan will be discussed at the next meeting of the council’s cabinet on Wednesday, September 12.