Customer experience

Our commitment to customer experience

We are committed to being ambitious, sustainable, and connected, serving all people living, working, and visiting Highland.

By listening to our customers, we know we are doing lots of things right. You told us about examples of excellent customer service. We also know that we need to be ambitious in changing the way customers interact with us and focus on improving the overall experience of interacting with us. Our work is informed by the Highland Council Programme (2022-2027) and the Highland Council Delivery Plan (2024-2027).

Our Vision is to put the customer at the centre of what we do, make it easy for customers to contact us, and to keep them updated as their enquiries progress.

What is customer experience?

Customer experience is all the contact that a customer has with the Highland Council. This includes all reasons for contacting us, and all the ways of contacting us from your report through to resolution. For example, online, on the telephone or in person.

Our customers are defined as anyone who lives, works in, or visits the Highlands. This includes our internal customer interactions. We have listened to the views of our customers to develop our vision and our change framework to enable us to make changes in the future.

Our Framework for Success will enable the following council-wide changes in the future:

  • DNA - we will grow a customer service culture, so that all employees keep a customer-focused approach so that customers are always considered
  • Design - will design our services in alignment with this strategy using the 'Scottish Approach to Service Design' framework so that customer needs are always considered
  • Deliver - we will deliver a positive customer experience across all ways of contacting us, and ensure that every method of contact enables customers to feel valued and informed of next steps