Improving digital self-serve in ctax

Improving digital self-serve for council tax (WIP)

How might we enable residents to manage their council tax easily online while reducing avoidable contact and improving service efficiency?

Overview

This ongoing service transformation focuses on improving how residents interact with council tax services at Barking & Dagenham Council. Residents regularly need to check balances, report moves, manage payments, or access documents, yet many struggle to self-serve by completing these tasks digitally. Instead they rely on phone, email, or in-person support. Some self-serve options exist but are difficult to navigate, while some tasks simply can’t be done online.

The work takes a whole-service approach, looking beyond website usability to include operational workflows, legacy systems, accessibility needs, and income collection priorities. Following Discovery, we are now beginning Alpha exploration, testing service improvements through prototyping and user research before implementation.

My role

Service Design Lead

I led service design activity across a multidisciplinary team spanning UX research, product, customer contact and operations. I coordinated discovery work, supported user researchers and business analysts, facilitated stakeholder collaboration, and translated research and operational insight into service recommendations now being tested in Alpha.

My responsibilities included:

Leading service discovery across council tax journeys
Using research and analytics to identify service failures and improvement opportunities
Coordinating customer journey mapping across digital and operational touchpoints
Supporting the project management team to embed agile service design practice
Leading rapid prototyping and iterative user testing
Engaging senior stakeholders and influencing service direction using evidence

The problem

Many residents want to self-serve but encounter friction that pushes them towards assisted channels. Analytics data indicated that only around 30% of users successfully complete council tax tasks online, and usability testing uncovered barriers such as unclear navigation, fragmented journeys, or lack of reassurance after completing high-risk actions such as payments or account updates.

Contact centre data reinforced this. Routine transactional queries - particularly balance checks, payments, and move notifications account for a substantial share of demand. Analysis suggests approximately 4000+ annual contacts relate to journeys that should be fully self-service, absorbing around 7000 staff hours each year.

With an estimated average cost of about £5 per contact with a customer centre representative, reductions in avoidable contact could deliver meaningful operational savings while improving resident experience. The aim, however, is not to eliminate assisted channels but to ensure they are used where most valuable, recognising varying levels of digital access and confidence across the borough.

Operational discovery also highlighted backend challenges including manual document verification, fragmented workflows, and limited interoperability between systems, all of which contribute directly to delays and repeat contact.

Discovery

Approach

We focused on understanding the service holistically rather than optimising individual touchpoints. This included:

Analysis of contact centre and inbox demand (done by UX research and customer contact team)
Surveys on council tax webpages (done by UX research team)
Moderated usability testing of existing digital journeys
Mapping current-state customer journeys across the highest-volume enquiries
Co-design workshops bringing together front and back office to identify blockers across channels for different user groups including digitally excluded residents and those with language barriers
Back-office process mapping to understand operational constraints (done by business analysis colleagues)
Synthesising findings across information sources to identify opportunities for improvement

Customer journey maps were developed for the six most common enquiry types, linking user experience, operational processes, and system dependencies. These artefacts helped align stakeholders around where service failures were occurring and where intervention would have the greatest impact.

Accessibility and inclusion are being considered throughout, ensuring improvements support digital adoption while maintaining assisted routes for residents who need them.

Workshops with front and back office to understand experiences and journeys of different user groups

Example of a current state customer journey for one of six high volume transactions/enquiries

Key insights

Several themes emerged consistently:

Many residents want to self-serve but encounter friction that pushes them toward assisted channels.
Navigation and wayfinding issues make it difficult to locate services or account access, while forms often lack clarity or reassurance after submission.
Actions and information is fragmented, across a service portal, e-forms, AI chatbot, and generic website information to find information or complete tasks.
Operational complexity plays a significant role. Manual processing, fragmented workflows, and limited interoperability between systems contribute directly to backlogs and delays experienced by residents.
Accessibility and inclusion remain essential considerations. Digital improvement must support, not disadvantage, residents with language barriers, accessibility needs, or limited digital confidence.

Recommendations and next phase

Based on discovery insights, recommendations focus on both frontstage experience and backstage service delivery. Key areas include:

Improving website navigation and wayfinding so residents can quickly access council tax services and their account
Developing a more unified My B&D account experience where residents can manage council tax tasks in one place, with potential future expansion across other council services
Improving transactional forms, such as move-in/move-out journeys, to reduce incomplete submissions, clarify evidence requirements, and provide better confirmation and status feedback
Addressing backend operational constraints, including manual verification steps, fragmented workflows, and opportunities for better system integration. This is key to deliver a seamless front-end experience for users.

We are now moving into Alpha exploration, starting with rapid prototyping of improved journeys (screenshots below) to align stakeholders, clarify backend changes such as API integration between council tax systems, and test initial ideas with residents. These early clickable prototypes are being developed by non-technical staff using Replit and Figma Make. The next phase will involve working with product teams to develop usable prototypes in test environments before moving towards implementation.

Initial rapid prototypes to align stakeholders, clarify feasibility and backend improvements - developed using tools like Replit and Figma Make

Learnings

This work has reinforced the importance of designing public services end-to-end rather than focusing solely on digital channels. Backend processes, organisational constraints, and policy considerations often shape user experience as much as interface design.
Evidence-led, agile service design approaches have been instrumental in bringing structure to a complex transformation space. Iterative testing is helping reduce delivery risk, build stakeholder confidence, and create shared understanding across teams. This approach has been key in securing buy-in for service changes that extend beyond digital channels.