Supporting our staff to provide outstanding customer service

Introduction

We continued to invest in our people to ensure they are well supported to deliver the best results for clients.

Client Satisfaction Survey results

We survey our clients every two years as part of our Commonwealth funding agreement and use these insights to plan and improve our services.

This year was our largest survey to date – we surveyed over 2000 clients who received representation from both in-house and private lawyers.

The results demonstrated a high level of client satisfaction with Legal Aid NSW services.

• 82% of clients were satisfied with the overall service they received from Legal Aid NSW.
• 82% of clients were satisfied with their lawyer.
• 88% of clients said it was easy to contact Legal Aid NSW when they first needed help.
• 86% of clients agreed that they would recommend Legal Aid NSW to others.
• 88% of clients said they knew where to get help in the future.

Clients reported that the help they received had a positive impact on their lives, improving their:

• understanding of their legal problem (70%)
• confidence to deal with their legal problem (66%)
• perceived level of safety and security (54%)
• ability to deal with their financial situation (51%)
• relationship with their family (44%), and
• ability to carry on with day-to-day activities (56%).

The survey also highlighted three areas where we can improve – ensuring timely responses to our clients, keeping our clients informed throughout their legal matters and improving our capacity to meet clients’ cultural and personal needs.

Excellent service right from the start

Our team at LawAccess NSW provides a range of legal information and referrals to anyone in NSW with a legal problem. In 2023–24, we answered more than 162,516 calls from the public, an increase of 25.2 percent from the previous year. Almost 40 percent of customers were assisted without any further referral, 17.1 percent of customers were triaged into Legal Aid NSW advice services, and 26.2 percent were referred to community legal centres.

It’s essential that we provide a person-first, customer-focused experience. This year, the team has focused on educating the frontline information officers to ensure they have the tools they need to build trust and respond to customers in a trauma-informed way.

The team has transitioned to a new contact centre platform, improving the user experience. They have seen growth in the use of their callback feature, which keeps a customer’s place in the queue and calls them back when an information officer is available to take their call. The LawAccess NSW webchat service experienced 100 percent growth this financial year since its deployment onto our new co-branded website, with 32,292 chats answered.

The team continues to attend community events to promote LawAccess NSW, building awareness of how they can assist and how they work with Legal Aid NSW and other service providers.

Collecting and recording client data

In 2023–24, we have explored some of the ways we collect personal data from our clients and how this impacts their experience. We ran trials about how we ask clients if they identify as Aboriginal, how we ask about and record adjustments required due to disability and consulted extensively on how we ask about and record a client’s gender.

We are committed to identifying what changes, resources and training our staff need to ensure this information is collected in a client-centred way. Recommendations have been made based on these trials and consultations, and system changes and training for frontline staff will be developed and rolled out in 2024–25.

Learning community of practice

This year, we formed a learning community of practice, inviting colleagues from teams across the organisation to meet monthly to share information and resources, coordinate activities and offer peer support and development.

Leadership development

We want to make sure we are giving managers the tools they need to lead teams that provide great outcomes for our clients. In 2023–24, we provided more than 200 opportunities for our people leaders to attend development programs and conducted a review of our recent development activities.

Staff numbers over five years

Ensuring we have adequate staff helps us offer the best possible services to our clients.

*Under the Government Sector Employment Act 2013 (NSW).

The year ahead

• We will elevate children and young people as high-priority clients and improve how we work with and for them, including embedding their voices in our service design.
• We will move the LawAccess NSW and Statewide Advice teams to a modern, tailored hybrid office.
• We will develop and launch a reward and recognition framework that embeds a culture of recognition, acknowledgement and gratitude across our organisation and showcases the incredible work our people do in serving their clients and the communities of NSW.
• We will build a leadership development framework to ensure that we support and develop the leaders that Legal Aid NSW needs to serve our clients and create supportive and respectful workplaces in which our people can thrive.