Kent Fire and Rescue Service
Customer Insight Research Phase 1 2022 - Results and Learnings

Prior to the commencement of the customer insight project, little information was known about the population of Kent and Medway whom KFRS serve. Specifically, there were gaps in KFRS understanding of customers’ perceptions towards the fire service, attitudes around fire safety, potential barriers to accessing services, awareness of non-emergency services, fire risk perception, and fire safety behaviours customers currently carry out at home. This knowledge would be useful in tailoring current services and interventions as well as the development of customer personas which in turn would help to fulfil the strategic objective of matching services to needs. The customer insight project is also driven by the strategic objectives of helping people living in Kent and Medway to stay safe from fire, promoting fire safety behaviours in the home and preventing and minimising harm.

Currently, KFRS have access to incident reports that identify broadly what caused a fire incident, but these do not give any detailed information as to the human behavioural element of the fire, or any details about the people themselves that were involved. Additionally, whilst it is possible to access public health datasets that show county level trends in relevant behaviours such as smoking, as well as demographic information relating to socio-economic status (SES), none of these can be directly linked to specific individuals. Furthermore, there is a dearth of information available that relates directly to the fire service and fire-related safety attitudes and behaviours. It is therefore essential for KFRS to fill the gap by collecting primary data that addresses customer attitudes and behaviours that can be linked to existing knowledge about customer groups. It is also useful to be able to link individual details to individuals' attitudes and perceptions to facilitate segmentation.

Using census data and public health datasets, the proportion of different demographic groups and trends in some behaviours throughout Kent can be identified. There is also empirical research evidence that some demographic variables are more or less associated with fire incidents. For example, a report into multiculturalism and fire safety by Leicestershire FRS showed that ethnicity related variables were associated with fire incidents. Additionally, the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) have drafted a ‘definition of risk’ that aims to assist FRS’s to use data to associate individual factors with risk of fire (NFCC, 2021). Previous research from outside of the UK also identifies that certain demographic characteristics are associated with greater risk of fatality, casualty, or injury in accidental dwelling fires (KFRS, 2021). Therefore, the customer insight project aims to bring together various strands of the customer engagement and safety strategy by gaining more knowledge about customer attitudes and behaviours through answering the following research questions:

• What is the demographic make-up of people who live in Kent and Medway?
• What are KFRS customer attitudes towards KFRS?
• What KFRS services are customers aware of, and which are they using?
• Do any customer groups struggle to access KFRS services
• What are customer’s attitudes towards fire safety?
• What are customer’s current fire safety behaviours?
• Do any customer groups need to change their behaviour to become more fire safe at home?
• What is the best way to communicate with KFRS customers?

To ensure the above research questions are covered in depth, the customer insight project will be separated into phases, with the completion of each phase informing the focus of the next.