Case Study Case Management

Improving outcomes in complex, high-stakes service journeys that directly affect access to support required case management with greater clarity, equity, and decision support.

I led the design of a digital case management platform that standardised how cases were captured, triaged, tracked, and resolved, improving service delivery and regulatory compliance, and scaling across services.

We exceeded the self-service adoption target.

Results: In the target operating model, 40% of these case types were mandated to be via self-service through the customer portal.

This was exceeded by 17.7 percent. It also enabled an innovative model for a customer resolution centre.

Local Government

2021 - 2022

My role: Service Design Lead

Co-design participants: 84

Key Skills:

Human Centred Design: User research, empathy, and accessibility
Systems Thinking: Process mapping, ecosystem design, and scalability.
Information Architecture: organising case types and required data in a clear, logical structure.
Prototyping: advocating for, and undertaking 'sandbox' testing.
Co-creation and Co-design: stakeholder alignment, facilitation, and clear handovers to delivery teams.
Change management and advocacy: communication, on-boarding, and feedback loops.
Change Readiness: Psychology and Behavioural Science
Data-driven decision making supporting analytical understanding; defining metrics and running usability testing.
Leadership and mentorship
Business Case preparation and presentation

This also resulted in:

Improved decision consistency across teams
Reduced variation in case handling times
Increased staff confidence in applying thresholds.
Reduced repeat contacts (lower failure demand)

The decision framework became a governance tool, helping leadership align policy with day-to-day practice.

Blueprints revealed decision rights, information gaps, and handoffs, enabling operational leaders to redesign accountability.

Service Design Methods Used:

Discovery and Define Sprints
Prototyping
Service Patterns
Process Mapping
User Stories

Reflections:

This work reinforced that clarity in decision language is not just operational; it’s a design problem with emotional consequences.

Helping frontline staff document and share their practical knowledge delivered quicker, more consistent outcomes than workforce development alone.

The Brief and Challenge:

Users faced inconsistent experiences and outcomes across case types (complaints, compliments, enquiries, and access requests). Decisions were made without shared criteria, leading to inequity, avoidable dissatisfaction, and failure demand. Staff lacked confidence in decision thresholds, increasing rework and frustration.

"We are co-designing a single simplified system for managing cases that provides the best possible customer experience and supports good customer journeys, with privacy designed in, so that we are successful through evaluation of our outcomes, and that we have identified benefits that can be realised."

Service Design Brief Title: Case Management Discovery. We will be co-designing the way that we would like to manage cases together in going forward.

We worked with frontline staff and service users to understand what really happens day to day, and where assumptions were leading to different decisions.

This was one of the largest and most complex service design projects delivered, bringing together multiple teams and user groups.

The work was a key enabler of the future Target Operating Model (TOM), supporting the shift to standardised service patterns:

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The aim was to provide a platform that supported a joined-up customer journey and enabled a single customer record, designed to scale and onboard all 150 services.

At the time, the organisation had limited experience with design tools and methods, so the business case also served as a 'proof of concept'. The approach was later adopted more widely.

In scope:

Complaints, compliments and comments
Performance
Enquiries and service requests
Freedom of Information (FOI) requests
Subject Access Requests (SARs)

This image shows 'the brief, the scope and timelines for the service design for case management. The first stage is discovery and define, the next governance and the third develop and deliver

Process

I led discovery and definition, then supported the handover into product and solution development. A core output was a Theory of Change (ToC), which set clear outcomes and design principles:

Join up data across teams and systems to enable end-to-end visibility.
Standardise and simplify processes through better use of technology, while reducing technical debt.
Improve customer experience and reduce running costs by 20%.

The programme was high stakes, with a clear requirement to reduce resourcing and overall operating costs.

During the design, we engaged 8% of the workforce (101 people) through structured co-design activity.

Given the scale of the work, we adopted a change-readiness approach, which I co-led with the change management and development manager. We ran facilitated sessions and a workforce survey to capture views, identify risks, and shape adoption plans, drawing on our combined psychology and behavioural science expertise.

Each sprint was transcribed, anonymised, and moderated, creating a clear audit trail linking design decisions back to evidence.

I also set up a continuous improvement Teams page to maintain an ongoing dialogue with the workforce and capture feedback post-design.

This image says: Discovery sprints for case management, 7th May 2021 - Rachel A.Wood

This image shows how the service design discovery sprint for case management will work in terms of times etc. The second part shows the running order of the sprints.

The image shows a slide for the discovery virtual sprint for the case management service design. It shows nine questions which were the focus of the sprint.

This image of a slide says 'hope that this has been of interest to you, and I look forward to working with you. If you would like to get in touch please contact me Rachel A.Wood. Here to help - happy service designing.

Results

Through the facilitated sessions, we identified the following key pain points and challenges:

Managing queues and navigating an unwieldy menu of services and activities
Taking more time to understand reported issues fully, with a human-led approach
Providing clearer, more transparent responses to better manage expectations
Clarifying roles and responsibilities to support a ‘one team’ way of working

Overall, residents emphasised the need for better listening and faster, more consistent responses.

Working with the product manager, I evaluated the pilot delivery against the intended operating model and the business case (case for change). We also ensured transcripts were converted into user stories and oversaw their handover into DevOps.

Discovery and definition for the service design were delivered to the required timeline, alongside the pilot releases needed ahead of scaling and wider onboarding. By the 18‑month mark, 25 services had been successfully onboarded to the system. I then led the transfer of further service areas, such as Taxi Licensing, Disabled Facilities Grant, and all of Housing, onto the same solution.

The service design delivered the required resource optimisation (benefits realisation) and supported the launch of a new Customer Resolution Centre.