The pilot programme for our consular appointments booking service has been running as a public beta for a few weeks now, so it’s time to take stock of progress.
Since my last post on the discovery phase for consular appointments, we have focused on building and iterating the product, training staff on how to manage their appointments, and getting feedback from users both externally and internally. This culminated in a successful service assessment of our appointments service and the launch of the public pilot in November.
We’ve been making changes based on feedback and data as the pilot progresses, and have addressed many of the issues we discovered in our appointments user needs research, with a particular focus on the following areas:
- simplifying the user journey – in tandem with updates to the notarial service guides on GOV.UK, ensuring that customers can book each service within one click of the guide page, without having to register or log in
- removing duplication – ensuring that service descriptions, fees and eligibility information are centralised on the above GOV.UK pages, rather than duplicated and distributed in many locations. In the past some duplication had led to conflicting information
- being consistent – with the same service names used globally, in every post, on both the GOV.UK pages and the appointment booking pages. This removes confusion, making things easier and faster for our customers. It also helps our staff at contact centres who need to keep abreast of the offerings in hundreds of locations
- conveying authority – by housing the booking service on a GOV.UK domain, with the appropriate government design and styling, without adverts or other distractions
- taking out limits – gone is the ceiling on the number of monthly bookings, improving the chances of customers finding a slot which suits their schedule
- providing alternate channels – ensuring we can provide assistance to people who need help to use digital services (‘assisted digital’). Call handlers at our global contact centres can now make and amend bookings on behalf of customers in any location worldwide
- fixing reporting – so that for the first time we can get a real time, aggregate view of all the online appointments worldwide, including whether they were made directly by customers themselves or if they were helped by FCO staff. We are also collecting details on whether customers agree to be contacted for feedback to help us improve our services.
The first booking took place in Munich in November, and we now have 37 posts taking part in the pilot in 17 countries, as shown on this map:
Between them these posts have taken over 1,000 appointments online to date. The most popular services? Bookings for issuing emergency travel documents (50% of appointments), making certified copies of documents (13%), and administering oaths, affirmations and affidavits (12%).
In my next post I’ll look at how we went about delivering these changes – the development process with our third party supplier, the team, and our approach to training.
Follow Mark at @markbarlow