KFRS wins bronze award for providing outstanding service

Kent Fire and Rescue Service (KFRS) has been awarded for its innovative work in embedding a customer-centric culture throughout the organisation – tailoring services for everyone in the county to help keep them safe.

The accolade of achieving bronze in the Customer Focus category of the iESE Public Sector Transformation Awards on 9 March, acts as a springboard for KFRS as it embarks on a pioneering project to really get to know the people it serves.

The insight gathering initiative comes following five years of work to gradually redesign everything the fire service offers, putting the people of Kent and Medway at the centre – the focus shifting to what they need, instead of what the fire service thinks they need.

KFRS Customer Experience Strategic Lead, Richard Stanford-Beale, said: “We’re really happy to have been awarded for our transformational work in this area, and it’s a catalyst from which to launch into our large-scale customer insights project – it’s the first time a fire and rescue service has undertaken such an initiative to truly understand its peoples’ needs, behaviours and motivations.

“We’re doing this because we recognise that everyone is unique, we all think, feel and act differently, so to help keep people safe we need to really understand Kent and Medway residents. We will embrace the differences and use what we find to shape what we do – in everything from emergency response, to our breadth of work around preventing emergencies.”

Information being gathered will include, demographics, attitudes and perceptions about KFRS, service awareness and accessibility, fire safety behaviours and attitudes, and communication channels.

Richard added: “This intelligence will be vital as we seek to continue to improve and ensure our services are equally accessible to everyone.”