Content Design London

Content transformation for Redbridge Council

How user-centred content design reduced helpline calls by 10%

We chose Content Design London to support the development of our organisational content transformation because we trusted them to bring unparalleled expertise, clarity, and rigour to the process. Their user-centred, evidence-based approach helped us move beyond assumptions so we could create content that truly works for our diverse communities and audiences.

Trusha Patel, Digital Experience and Content Lead, Redbridge Council

The challenge

Redbridge Council, a local authority in East London, enlisted CDL's help to make it easier for residents to use services online and reduce the volume of calls to the helpline.

The goal

Over 3 months, our goals were to:

  • identify unmet user needs prompting calls to the helpline
  • transform content to meet user needs and reflect how council services work
  • reduce the number of calls to the helpline
  • train the digital team with user-centred content skills so they can continue the work once CDL had left

How we did it

To help Redbridge transform content, a CDL team comprising of Senior Content Designer Nia Campbell and Content Designers Jack Garfinkel and Jonti Eccles supported Redbridge’s digital team to:

Create conditions for success

We ran alignment workshops with Redbridge's digital team covering ways of working, stakeholder mapping and project communications. These workshops helped create a plan to work effectively with stakeholders and sustain momentum for the project.

Run discoveries and content sprints

We worked on Redbridge's five high-demand areas: housing, schools, council tax, parking fines, and bins and recycling.

Each area followed a 4-week sprint cycle, combining interviews with helpline colleagues, Google Analytics and GovMetric analysis, and content reviews to understand what was and wasn’t working. We analysed the common FAQs to the helpline to identify gaps and unclear information in the existing content. Together with stakeholders, we defined and validated user needs, then pair-wrote with subject experts to make content that was accurate, accessible, and answered users’ questions.

We also dug into why people struggled with navigation and labels, and coached the Redbridge team on using card sorts to plan better structures in future.

Define tone of voice guidance

Because Redbridge uses a devolved content model, we brought together colleagues from digital, communications and the contact centre to define a shared tone of voice. Through workshops, we created a tone guide and a set of real examples to help teams write consistently across all services. Here’s a guide to running a tone of voice workshop with your team by Nia Campbell.

What we achieved

We gave Redbridge a framework it could reuse to create user-centred content.

The exemplar content is now guiding the wider content transformation of Redbridge's website. The new content is live and has improved outcomes for users and staff. With council tax content, by taking a user needs-first approach we achieved:

  • 22% reduction in number of webpages
  • 10% drop in calls to the helpline
  • 43% increase in positive page ratings

After we published the new content for our high-demand services, we noticed a drop in calls and an increase in web traffic. Because CDL co-produced the content with stakeholders and user testing was carried out, we were confident that the content was working for our users.

CDL was able to give us a fresh pair of eyes on our content and a blueprint to move forward which allowed us to show the organisation the benefits of content transformation.

Trusha Patel, Digital Experience and Content Lead, Redbridge Council

About Redbridge Council 

Redbridge Council is working to help residents see positive change by making sure that regeneration benefits communities, being a great place to live as a family, and tackling the root causes of social challenges.

Contact us

If you're struggling with high call volumes and want to transform both your content and your team's capability to create user-centered digital services, email us: hello@contentdesign.london