Agenda item

The Customer Focussed Team Manager provided members with a presentation which included information about:

·         Moving towards a digital council

·         Supporting customers

·         Changes made since January 2018

·         The new technology enabled space for customers at Petters House – Connect

·         Successes so far

·         Current phone performance – including statistics for wait times and calls dealt with at first point of contact

·         Plans for improvements

·         Targets for the future

Members were briefly shown a demonstration of the new Customer Access Points which had opened fully for customer use across the district the previous week.

During discussion the Customer Focussed Team Manager responded to points of detail including:

·         Acknowledge comments that some customers may be waiting 5 days for an email response to queries or requests. Would like to see turnaround times of one day but currently this was not possible due to the required technology not being in place yet.

·         Regarding wifi at Connect – only the Customer Access Points and office systems were on a secure network. However a public WiFi was also available.

·         Some service requests raised via the Members Portal did not yet link directly with systems, but instead generated an email which was leading to some delays in resolving requests.

·         Only in the very initial stages of looking at replacement call centre software. Risk mitigation for dips in service when new software is installed or if the current software has problems, will be carefully considered.

·         There were currently 18/19 FTE staff within the team, of which 5 are agency staff. When all systems are in place and fully operation it was anticipated there would be 19 to 20 FTE staff.

·         The team were experiencing a fairly quick turnover of staff. Some staff the posts had not been their first choice of role within the Transformation process, and as opportunities had arisen, several staff had changed jobs internally or left the authority.

·         Part of the additional funding approved by District Executive in July would enable more cross-training and staffing at the Connect centre.

·         Difficult to provide figures regarding how many people are available at a time to answer calls and how many calls per hour, as there are peaks and troughs throughout the day.

·         Messages are posted on the website if the there team were experiencing a high number of calls.

·         The current software did not have a function for a call queue numbering system.

·         If customers were experiencing difficulty getting through on the phone the advice was to leave a voicemail. For the future, the team were also looking to roll out Customer Access Points into libraries where possible which would help to broaden access.

·         The current call handling system/software has been in place for several years and is not connected to Civica or been included in the Transformation process. The current system would no longer be supported form mid 2020 and hence new software would need to be sourced from that date going forward

At the end of discussion, the Chairman thanked the Customer Focussed Team Manager for attending the meeting and answering questions raised by members.