As Taylor Swift sang - "I'm feeling (20)22!" 

We hope everyone has had a great start to the New Year, and I think as a team, we are looking forward to see what 2022 has in store for us and the new challenges that are ahead!

Anyway..Welcome back to our waste transformation project!

I think it’s fair to say that we had hoped we would be further on by the end of last year, but the path has taken a slight detour with things that were out of our control. We had to halt our work on the appointment forms due to some extra work needing to be carried out by our providers.

Although what initially looked like a setback, it has actually given us some breathing space as some new Covid related forms came in and had to take priority.

We have also managed to make a start on another waste process, which is how our residents order bins for their new build properties. This was briefly touched upon last year, but we just didn’t have the time to develop the full end to end process that we wanted.

We have started to gather requirements from the business, and really dug into their current process. As with all of our work, we want to bridge the gap to a more streamlined and simple way of working. As it stands, customers phone up and leave a voicemail and this sets off a chain of events that includes a paper form. We want to make this a digital service, which can be carried out within the digital customer portal (DCP).

After speaking with the business, we have also spoken with a member of the development team to find the best way to configure the process. I think the route we will take, is that same route we took with the garden waste subscription service. This again shows how developments can be re used and adapted.

We are also still testing and iterating our bulky collection process, with a hopeful outlook that this will be completed soon. This has been a complicated process, as it includes a section were DCP automatically generates a price based on the inputted items. There have been a few hurdles but we’ve taken the challenge and found ways to overcome them, all whilst not compromising on the process we want to achieve.

User research

User research has been focused mainly on the garden waste forms, as these went live just before Christmas. We wanted to keep track of the forms, and as it was the first time subscriptions has been on DCP we wanted to make sure it ran smoothly. The customer panel mail box had a few enquiries, some focused around creating an account, so the user researcher has been on hand to support these customers.

Our upcoming tasks:

     - To continue to work on our appointment forms.

     - To test our bulky forms, and then test them again!

     - To continue working towards a better new build bin process.

To get in touch with us; with any thoughts, comments or queries please email customerpanel@blackburn.gov.uk