Agenda item

The Business and Customer Services Portfolio Holder, Benefits Manager and Head of People and Organisational Development, presented the Customer Contact Service annual performance report for 2017. The committee was informed that performance had improved steadily in 2017 due to the service being fully staffed and being proactive in filling vacancies.

The committee discussed the report:

·         In response to a query, the committee was informed that on calling the Contact Centre, callers were placed in a queue and informed of this by an automated message.

·         The committee was informed that there was a consistent number of residents who did not use online services. This number had been expected to reduce but it had remained the same.

·         The Benefits Manager informed the committee that although performance figures were good she wanted to see a better performance going forward, for example with fewer calls being dropped.

·         Committee members raised issues regarding being able to contact Council officers directly. An example was given of having to go through the Contact Centre in order to get hold of an officer to answer queries when on Planning site visits. It was felt that when trying to answer queries whilst on site, councillors should be directed to the relevant officer quickly. It was also pointed out that some officers did not respond to voicemail messages.

·         The full complement of staff and the limit to the number of calls that could be handled by the service was queried. As this information was not available at the meeting, the Head of People and Organisational Development agreed to circulate this information to the committee following the meeting and explain which staff were part time and full time.

·         The committee was informed that rotas were plotted on the previous year’s activity. There was an industry standard for the number of staff needed to respond to a number of calls and this was used in conjunction with the previous year’s call numbers, in order to plot the rotas.

·         The reason for the percentage of calls answered at first point of contact no longer being reported corporately, was queried. In response to this the committee was informed that in the majority of cases this metric was not met at times when new staff were being trained, and it had been found that reporting this metric corporately had not added value. However the metric was still monitored by the service. Despite this, the committee felt that having this information would be helpful.

·         The committee was informed that a joint work plan was being developed with the Planning Service for low level enquiries to be diverted from the Planning Service to the Customer Contact Service. The aim of this was to take unnecessary pressure off Planning Officers and to provide better customer service. The Portfolio Holder emphasised that residents would still be able to talk to Planning Officers when needed.

·         It was observed that between 2015-2017, the total number of calls had reduced despite the changes to bin rounds in March 2017. This suggested that enabling residents to self-serve online, was helping to reduce the number of calls.

·         The committee was informed that the Council was on target to implement the automated visitor system.

The committee thanked officers for the report and were encouraged by the Customer Contact Centre’s performance.