Agenda item

The Committee received a presentation from the Customer Services Manager. The presentation gave information on what Customer Services was, what the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) were, what performance issues had recently occurred and what was planned to improve performance.

The Customer Services Manager gave the presentation; questions were asked and the following information arose.

·         The Council’s website had received nearly three million visits during 2010/11, these included visits made by Councillors and members of staff. The website contained a rating system with only 0.025% of feedback rating the site as poor at the time.

·         475,449 telephone calls had been made to the contact centres with an average speed to answer of 20 seconds. These figures included appointments with officers however they did not include calls made directly to officers bypassing the contact centres.

·         The policy for officers responding to voicemails was to do so within one working day. All departments within the Council should adhere to the Customer Charter which was a benchmark for performance of services. The Committee believed those calls going directly to officers also need to be monitored.

·         Mystery shoppers were used to monitor performance related to customer service for each department in the Authority. Committee Members expressed belief that they were ideally placed to take part as mystery shoppers and stated that in future they should be consulted as mystery shoppers due to the feedback they received from constituents.

·         24 hour emergency contact had been transferred to CCTV operators. This had improved the service however further developments were needed. CCTV operators needed to assess whether calls were genuine emergencies more critically. If emergencies needed to be dealt with the CCTV operators had contact details for those officers on call.

·         Face to face interaction with customers was offered at four customer service centres across Cheshire East as well as in several libraries. The Council’s plan was to extend this to all libraries in Cheshire East to offer better access and increase the use of libraries. Library staff understood the need to offer these supplementary services.

·         The strategy was to enhance face to face quality however there was also an intention to reduce the number of customers accessing face to face by directing them to the telephone and internet access. Face to face costs were on average £7.23 per interaction; by telephone was £2.40 and use of the website was 23p per visit. The Customer Service Manager stated that there was a need to improve service quality but also reduce costs. There was no increase in overall cost for rolling out face to face access to libraries and the strategy resulted in a net saving for the Council.

·         The contact centres in Cheshire East experienced poor service during March, April and May due to issues with the telephony infrastructure following the introduction of the essential numbers; this had since been dealt with. The new waste collection system that was rolled out in the South of the Borough in March 2011 was poorly carried out which resulted in a large number of calls that the contact centre wasn’t prepared for. The Customer Service Manager assured the Committee that lessons had been learnt and that the same would not happen during the roll out of the silver recycling bins.

·         Although the Council wanted more people to use the website to access information, many areas of the Borough didn’t have access to broadband. The Council would try to fund extension of broadband access and was bidding for funding as part of the IT strategy. Those residents with access to broadband yet not using it would be encouraged to access training, available in libraries, known as Digital Inclusion.

The Chairman thanked the Customer Service Manager for the presentation.

The Chairman asked the Committee to consider the presentation and decide if they wanted further information. The Committee requested information on the Customer Charter performance of each department and figures from customer services after the roll out of silver bins.

RESOLVED:

(a)  That the Customer Service Manager be thanked and the presentation be noted.

(b)  That a report be produced by the Customer Services Manager, within a month of the roll out of silver bins, on contact centre performance and present it to the Committee at the November meeting.

(c)  That information on the Customer Charter performance for each department be presented to the relevant Scrutiny Committee.

(d)  That information on the types of issues the contact centre was receiving would give indications as to which services were failing.  Information for each department could be presented to relevant scrutiny committees to establish whether further review of departments was necessary.

(e)  Councillors should be included in future mystery shopper exercises

The Customer Services Manager left the meeting.

The meeting was adjourned for five minutes