Department of Finance Customer Strategy and Charter

Our commitment to putting our customer and their needs at the centre of our organisation.
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At Finance, we are on a journey towards customer centricity, putting our customers and their needs at the centre of our organisation and ensuring they are considered in everything we do. 

Our customer strategy

Our Customer Strategy commits us to improving the way we deliver services to achieve our vision of a better tomorrow for the Western Australian community.

It is underpinned by four strategic commitments, with related actions, to ensure they are achieved. The way we deliver our services continues to be guided by our Customer Service Charter Commitments.

It confirms our commitment to deliver customer-centric services in a fair and equitable way. It outlines our strategic commitments and actions to ensure this can be achieved. As part of these commitments we will review and refresh our customer service charter every two years. 

Our customer service charter

The standard we strive to achieve when you interact with our people and services is that we are:

Reliable

We will:

  • communicate expected time frames upfront
  • let you know if things change
  • respond to your queries as soon as we can, even if we don’t have all the answers yet

Accessible

We will:

  • make it easy for you to find what you need
  • make it easy for you to understand
  • connect you to who you need to speak to

Experts

We will:

  • provide accurate information you can trust
  • use consistent processes
  • share our knowledge

Transparent

We will:

  • be open and honest
  • be upfront about the process and steps involved
  • be clear in our decision making

Understanding

We will:

  • listen and empathise
  • understand your situation and needs
  • be flexible and adjust our approach wherever possible

Our services

  • Advise: We provide strategic advice across WA Government and the public sector on reform projects, project and asset management, procurement and policy.
  • Build: We plan, deliver and manage fit-for-purpose solutions for major community infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, prisons, and government office accommodation.
  • Buy: We lead government procurement and leverage our buying power to secure products and services for government, driving value for money for Western Australian taxpayers.
  • Collect: We collect revenue to fund government services and administer payment of grants and subsidies to the Western Australian community.
  • Deliver: We facilitate and optimise delivery of corporate services, using insights and leading technologies to continuously innovate and improve.

Our Customer Strategy confirms the Department’s commitment to deliver customer-centric services in a fair and equitable way. It outlines our strategic commitments and actions to ensure this can be achieved. As part of these commitments, we will review and refresh our customer service charter every two years. 

Our customers

A customer at Finance is anyone who interacts with us to receive a service. Customers may interact with Finance under different circumstances: because they want to, or because they must. Finance commits to providing every customer with the best possible service experience.

In our central agency role, we lead key Government priorities and set policies and standards for WA government agencies to follow. Our priority is ensuring agencies comply with these policies and standards and key Government commitments are achieved. When the enforcement of our central agency mandate conflicts with our customers’ expectations of service delivery, we will clearly communicate our expectations and provide transparency on our decisions.

When we deliver services to our customers, we do so within the boundaries of our authorising environment. This includes the Minister for Finance, other central government agencies including the Department of Treasury, the Department of the Premier and Cabinet and the Public Sector Commission, alongside policies and State and Commonwealth legislation.

We consider interactions with the Western Australian Government and other central government agencies (when performing their central agency role) as part of our authorising environment, and they do not form part of our customer definition.

Our ability to deliver some services for customers may be affected by our authorising environment. We are committed to doing everything we can to provide customers the best possible services and outcomes consistent with our authorising environment and within the boundaries of the policies and standards we set.

Four segmented wheel depicting customers. The segments read (left to right) WA Community, Businesses, Staff, State Government Agencies.

Our strategic commitments

Engage and Measure - We engage with our customers to understand their needs and measure our success based on data and insights.
Focus - We focus our efforts and resources on what creates value for customers.
Deliver - We deliver a high-quality service and the best possible experience.
Grow and Learn - We grow and learn by sharing customer success stories and insights, and building capability in our people.

To achieve our Strategic Commitments, by 2026 we commit that we will:

Engage and Measure
• Seek to understand what’s important to our customers and measure their experience with us.
• Work with customers to develop our services to better meet their expectations.
• Collect and analyse customer insights that inform customer-centric decisions and measure outcomes against baselines.
• Engage regularly with our customers and use feedback to improve service outcomes.
• Measure and report our performance against the Customer Service Charter.

Focus
• Understand the services we provide, how we provide them, and who we provide them to.
• Have a service blueprint which guides our service experience.
• Focus on simplifying our processes and information.
• Develop and use customer outcome measurements when developing projects and services.
• Use customer journey mapping to improve our processes and reduce complexity for our customers.

Deliver
• Provide accessible processes for handling enquiries, feedback, and complaints.
• Measure and report on performance against customer key performance indicators.
• Ensure that staff outcomes are linked to the achievement of commitments in the
Customer Service Charter.
• Ensure that services are developed and designed with customers wherever possible.

Grow and Learn
• Explore new ideas to provide better services to our customers.
• Celebrate our customer successes and use these to improve our other services.
• Use insights from customer feedback to improve customer service delivery and provide a better experience for our customers.
• Develop and deliver a customer awareness training program and customer service skills program for our staff.

Feedback

We value your opinion and want to hear what you think about the quality of our service. We welcome compliments, concerns or comments on our service to you, so that we can continuously improve.

If you wish to help us in acknowledging great work by our team members, suggest how we might improve, or if you are not satisfied with our service, we encourage you to let us know via our feedback form.

Contact us

Please see WA.gov.au/Finance for our various office locations and opening hours, phone and email contact details. 

Escalate a complaint

If you’re not satisfied with our service or the outcome of a complaint, you may wish to contact the Ombudsman Western Australia.

Where we are unable to assist

The following areas are not handled by our internal feedback processes, and should be directed to the appropriate Minister, court, tribunal, or agency:

  • matters directly relevant to legislative provisions or rates of tax
  • matters of administrative law
  • appeal decisions
  • judicial decisions
  • matters relating to other government agencies