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I came across an excellent couple of slides today charting the emotional levels of service users as they accessed Tameside’s Free School Meal Service the old way and the new way. Click on the thumbnails above to see them fill-size.

The case study highlighted the way that appropriate use of ICT could greatly improve customer satisfaction and radically reduce costs.

However, what it also highlighted was the critical role that face-to-face has in the delivery of services. There are elements of many services that simply cannot be done online either because the target group are not online or because of the nature of the interaction requires it eg to confirm identity, to receive treatment etc.

The other thing is the cost of these face to face encounters both from the service users point of view and from the side of the service deliverer. So it makes a lot of sense to join up the face to face elements of as many services as possible. Service users like it and it saves lots of money for those delivering services.

Any other good case studies out there?

Additional material:

• Rethinking rural service delivery – Berry, 1998 and 2004
• The original presentation is here on the Cabinet Office website