Customer Centricity Part Two: Putting Your Customers First, Front and Center

In part one of this blog post, we talked about a Babylonian copper merchant who ran his business into the ground by supplying inferior goods and being a jerk to his buyers. One unhappy customer documented their dealings on a tablet which was discovered by archaeologists and translated by Cuneiform experts. Now the merchant and his poor customer service skills live on through the British Museum and the internet (you may find the translation of the tablet here).

We also talked about customer service and what it means to be customer centric. Being customer centric means knowing your customers so well that you can anticipate their needs. An organization has to be proactive in understanding their customers, how they use our services and interact with our products. Sometimes an organization has customer data they can examine. Sometimes an organization will actively solicit feedback from their customer base. And that’s exactly what the Town of Gilbert’s Environmental Services team did when they were considering altering their trash/recycling pickup schedule.

Some historical context: the Town of Gilbert went to same day pick up for residential trash and recycling in 2016 while keeping a four day schedule (pickups were Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday). Same day pickup means our team of drivers picks up both cans on the designated day of the week. Cans are only out one day a week, instead of putting out cans twice a week.

When Town of Gilbert debuted this new schedule, there were a few unintended repercussions. Some of our newer neighborhoods have shared drives or more condensed lots. These areas were built to accommodate one can. With both trash and recycling cans out at the same time, the streets became cluttered and parking was a challenge. Our trucks had difficulty maneuvering in these neighborhoods and the drivers had to stop and move the cans either because they were too close together or they were too close to a parked car. In addition, the boom of online ordering meant our recycling bins were filled with cardboard boxes that were not broken down. Our drivers had to stop the trucks in order to compact the boxes so they would have more room to finish their routes.

All this stopping and getting out of the truck meant less cans per hour being picked up. Which also meant the drivers were behind schedule. We don’t have the luxury of saying, “We’ll pick up the rest of the cans tomorrow!” (cue customer service reaction). As a result, our drivers began to work overtime to finish their routes. And as Gilbert continued to grow, all trucks had to be in service and there was no time for preventive maintenance. Which meant trucks were breaking down, which meant more down time for the drivers, which meant more hours spent finishing their routes and well, you can see what a vicious cycle this became.

For the residents, they were noticing that there was more trash out on the street because the drivers didn’t have time to pick up anything that had accidentally spilled. Residents in newer neighborhoods were concerned about parking and cans being pushed further out into the street. We knew from customer service calls what the residents were concerned about. But when it came to trash/recycling services, what did they want?

With the help of the Digital Government team, the Environmental Services team sent a survey to residents asking them to rate our services and what elements were important to them. The Environmental Services team could have stopped there. But they didn’t. They invited survey participants to go on ride alongs with our drivers so they could see some of the more challenging neighborhoods. Then, they held a focus group with the Gilbert residents to truly understand how we could better serve them.

This collaborative approach got the residents invested in helping us. Not only did our team get ideas for how to educate residents when it came to trash and recycling (bins four feet apart and no Styrofoam in recycling containers please!), we understood their critical “must haves” so that any solution we created would meet our customer needs and the needs of our drivers and truck maintenance. We also learned what services our residents would like in the future and what would make their experience seamless. How’s that for customer centric?

Our new trash/recycling schedule rolls out on October 1st. You can bet we used the findings from our customer focus group to determine the best way to communicate this change. Our new, five day (Monday — Friday) schedule can be found here.

We used many of the tools taught in EDGE Academy for this initiative. Want to learn more? Sign up for an upcoming workshop here.

If you have questions about this or reading Cuneiform, please reach out to Nathan Williams or Nina De Castro.