Councils frequently say that they have to change the way they engage with citizens. They talk less about what that means for their customer service functions.

Yet this area has been among the most radically affected over the past few years. And there is a lot more radical to come.

We have already seen new disciplines such as segmentation, data analysis and systems thinking entering local government, resulting in much better targeting of services. In some councils, face-to-face customer contact is slowly being closed down, to be replaced by a massive push for digitised public services.

A few authorities are planning to automate the bulk of their middle office processing and facilitate a massive shift to citizen self-service. The hope is that new digital services will be so good that people will switch channels seamlessly.