For many years local government has been attempting to become more customer-centric. While huge progress has been made, one issue for many councils is that despite making great efforts to simplify things for their customers, much of the contact they have with them is still unnecessary and avoidable.

On average we see three avoidable contacts made with an organisation for every valuable one. This is known as failure demand – a contact caused by an organisation's failure to do something right. This might be a customer getting in touch to say: ‘My bins were not collected' or ‘You sent me a letter saying I owe council tax but I have already paid' or ‘I haven't received the parking permit I requested'.