Katherine Courtney joined the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in October 2007 as Director of its newly established Customer Insight function. The function is accountable to the DWP Executive Team for ensuring DWP takes a customer-driven perspective in developing and running its business.

Since 2007, DWP’s Customer Insight function has delivered a number of strategic initiatives, including:
• Producing fresh customer segmentation analysis for DWP’s 22 million customers – shaping current and future service delivery strategy.
• Identifying the key drivers of satisfaction for DWP customers and developing a new Customer Charter – a simple unifying and motivating framework that helps staff and delivery partners focus on customer priorities, now being comprehensively embedded through Departmental processes and systems.
• Generating insight to improve services and outcomes for some of the UK’s most vulnerable people – including; disabled customers and their carers, those transitioning from benefits to pensions, and individuals returning to the labour market after periods of illness.
• Leading improvements in DWP’s complaints resolution and redress policy.

Prior to joining DWP, Katherine was the Executive Director of Business Development and Marketing for the Identity and Passport Service (IPS). Katherine was the Customer Champion on the IPS Board, with responsibility for generating insight to maintain customer confidence in IPS services during a period of significant business change and for engaging customers in the design of new services. The Business Development and Marketing directorate also delivered all IPS marketing and communications activities.

Katherine’s earlier career was in the telecommunications industry where she led major service development initiatives for a number of international start-up ventures. Working with BT Exact Technologies, she undertook the challenge of converting developments coming out of BT’s research laboratory into deliverable product and service propositions for customers. Previously, she directed international development projects for Cable & Wireless plc.