Issue - meetings

[Andy Moran, Director of Commercial Services, to present report]

Andy Moran, Director of Commercial Services, gave a short presentation about the performance of the customer services and the changes made to the service. The Director of Commercial Services advised the panel that Lisa Taylor, had recently been appointed to the post of Head of Customer Services as part the new strategy. The Director of Commercial Services gave an update on the proposed customer services operating model designed to respond to concerns about the performance. The Director of Commercial Services advised that the panel that the new system would categorise customer enquiries which can be fulfilled through self-service and those more complex enquiries would be dealt with separately. The panel were advised that the council receive 50,000 calls a month and that the current model was not sustainable in the long term in managing this level of customer contact.

The Director of Commercial Services advised the panel of a range of process changes made to support the new operating model, for example, re-organising the customer services team and also future changes, for example, the potential for using Skype to deal with planning enquiries more quickly.

The Director of Commercial Services advised the panel that an important part of the process is to have a single record for every customer rather than multiple records for the same person held by different service areas, relating to other enquiries.

The Director of Commercial Services commented on the technology being introduced to support this change, which would allow the customer to check progress and reduce the number of calls to the Council. The new customer system would help to avoid unnecessary duplication of similar types of enquiries and reduce the number of enquiries in the new process. The system would be provided with new functionality and supported by a reduction in the current number of 1700 web pages. The content on council web pages is being reviewed to further support this work.

The panel were advised that work is being done to get more people to deal with telephone enquiries in response to the difficulties highlighted in the report.

The panel commented that the current call back system is not working and gave examples of complaints received from residents. The Director of Commercial Services accepted the frustration experienced by customers and explained that work was being done to introduce changes from April 2019 to the telephone system which would provide a better response.

The panel criticised the poor performance of the customer services as detailed in the report in terms of the length of time taken to answer calls and the number of calls not answered. The panel commented that previous assurances given to them that planned changes would  provide a better customer service experience had not been delivered, despite considerable investment over many years.

The Director of Commercial Services accepted the criticism of the previous changes but added that it was necessary to install the base systems in order to deliver a better service that can work together more efficiently.

The panel discussed  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7