Resident and Customer Experience

For the person using a public service, the experience is the service. This module sets out three strands people weigh together, outcome, effort and respect, then draws on Jan Carlzon's moments of truth, John Alford's four public service roles and Albert Hirschman's exit, voice and loyalty. It also examines the words we use for the people we serve and why warm words cannot fix a broken process.

Leaders need reliable ways of knowing how people experience their services, and what you measure signals what you value. This module explains the Tenant Satisfaction Measures in England and the twelve standard questions in Wales, shows how survey method can move a score, and revisits Reichheld's Net Promoter Score and Keiningham's critique. It closes with LGA resident polling, the UK Customer Satisfaction Index and an insight matrix.

This module asks what makes public services hard to deal with and what leaders can do about it. Drawing on John Seddon's systems thinking, it separates value demand from failure demand, uses the National Audit Office's report on HMRC customer service, and applies Dixon, Freeman and Toman's research on reducing customer effort. It offers Avanti's five step process redesign, questions that expose waste and five practical moves to start.

People experience journeys, not processes, often across several organisations and usually because something has happened in their lives. This module covers journey maps, Lynn Shostack's service blueprint, life events and the Tell Us Once case. It revisits the UK and Welsh service standards, the principle of ask once, share safely and act joined up, and Sunstein's idea of sludge, closing with five moves for redesigning a journey.

Respect is the strand of experience that carries the rights dimension of public service most directly. This module draws on the Housing Ombudsman's 2024 spotlight, relationship of equals, and Miranda Fricker's epistemic injustice to examine who is believed and helped. It treats vulnerability as a situation, explains the anticipatory duty under the Equality Act 2010, sets out a six step vulnerability approach and Awaab's Law, and ends with record it once, honour it always.

Is the way into your service open to everyone, whatever their language, abilities or confidence with technology? This module covers the active offer of Welsh from the framework More than just words, the Welsh Language Standards for communication, the layers of digital exclusion, and the difference between digital only and assisted digital. It also explains designing for the edges, WCAG 2.2 and the accessibility regulations, and five tests for an inclusive front door.

Front-line staff deliver almost every moment of truth, and they cannot give what they lack. This module draws on Benjamin Schneider's service climate, Heskett's service-profit chain, Hochschild's emotional labour and Michael Lipsky's street-level bureaucracy to show why staff and resident experience move together. It explores discretion, a discretion and support matrix, neighbourhood coaching at Bromford and Hafod, Amy Edmondson's three moves for psychological safety and five moves to support the front line.

Silence is not satisfaction, and recorded complaints are only the tip of an iceberg of experience. This module shows why complaint handling is the weakest national measure, treats each complaint as experience data with a name on it, and sets out a cycle from complaint to learning. Drawing on Hirschman and the Housing Ombudsman and Public Services Ombudsman for Wales expectations, it covers triangulation and closing the loop at four levels, from the person to the board and public.

This capstone reads three very different cases through the lenses of the programme: residents' warnings before the Grenfell Tower fire, the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales report on Trivallis, and Tell Us Once. Each asks one question: were people heard? The module draws out five shared leadership lessons, sets out resident experience as a six step loop, and returns to Carlzon's moments of truth: every contact tells people who they are to us.