Agenda item

[To receive a presentation from the Head of Customer Engagement and Registrars]

Scrutiny Board welcomed Lamour Gayle, Head of Customer Engagement and Registrars to the meeting.

Customer Services used a number of channels to enable customers, citizens, visitors to the city, businesses and partnering organisations. These channels included:

·       Telephony

·       E-mail and web forms

·       Online and paper application processing

·       Face to face and

·       Virtual appointments

During Quarter 2 the Team handled 147, 403 customer contacts with the highest number of contacts being through telephony which accounted for 115,799 contacts. The majority of face-to-face appointments were for Taxi Licensing where walk-in appointments were provided at the Hickman Avenue site. Board noted that 6.6% (9687 call) of customers terminated their call before employees were able to answer.

During Quarter 2 in 2021 the Team received 125,486 calls. Of these calls, they were able to answer 115,799 and the call contact response rate for this quarter was 92.3%. There were 5,349 more calls in that quarter in comparison to the same period during 2020. An analysis of Mitel (telephony system) was undertaken for the period of 1 July 2021 to 27 September 2021, data showed that 2491 calls were terminated by the customer within 80 Seconds, 844 of those being within 30 seconds.

During Quarter 2 the Team handled 27,904 emails and web form enquiries. Enquiries relating to Revenue and Benefits accounted for the highest number of email and webform customer contact. The service level agreement with internal services was to process customer emails and webform enquiries within two working days and this was achieved this during Quarter 2. Board understood that the Team analysed email data to identify any trends in customer enquiries and to identify opportunities to work with services to improve published customer information. The Team also worked with the services to improve their web forms and the information that was on the website, all channels were analysed to help identify where the Team could make the customer journey slicker and easier.

During Quarter 2, Customer Services had processed 2,536 Blue Badge and school applications, provided support for home to school travel appeals and continued to support local businesses with business grant applications. In relation to these areas, the Team would process the applications as soon as they were received and there would only be further work required if areas such as occupational health assessments were needed, otherwise the Team would process the applications up to the point where the badge was issued to the customer. It was noted that for blue badges, the Team recognised how important they were to residents and pre-pandemic had held surgeries within the Civic Centre to help customers complete the forms online.  To follow up on this as part of the reopening, surgeries were also being held in areas such as Bilston and Wednesfield. Work had been carried out with the Insight and Performance team to identify areas where the highest numbers of applicants for blue badges came from and this information was used to inform where the surgeries were held.  It was however noted that the majority of customers applied online but paper forms could be sent out if requested or customers could attend the Civic Centre or Bilston Library to have face to face support.  The same service was being offered at the Civic Centre for school applications to support parents and carers with their applications and the team were looking to identify any hot spots in relation to this before the next round of secondary and primary school applications.

In relation to future plans to further improve the Customer Journey the following areas had been identified:

·       Review of current telephony system

·       Chat Bot solution

·       Web Chat solution

·       Document scanning solution for customers

·       Community based Customer Service Delivery

·       CWC and Wolverhampton Homes community-based Co-location

·       Work with Insight and Performance to identify any trends in demand for

·       Blue Badge appeals

Board welcomed the idea of the chat bot as this technology was already being used by a lot of businesses and it could really help to streamline interaction with customers.

Board considered that the call log suggested that there had been more calls this year but appreciated that this could be due to customers seeking additional support due to the pandemic and some services being reduced and new services such as the food bank being introduced.

Board considered that it Might be useful to have a breakdown of calls received during the week and queried whether there was any reporting available for specific days or busy periods during the day and what mitigating action was taken in relation to any identified busy periods. A query was also raised in relation to when calls were sent onto other departments and how or whether this was monitored to ensure that they were not just going to voicemail creating a backlog.

Board queried whether the Customer Services team had any call handling targets, were these being met and whether there was any analysis in relation to idol time or targets for wrap up times. Board also queried whether the service was able to let customers know where they were in the call queue and how long the wait was expected to be.  It was stated that the Team were aware and able to monitor busy periods and peak times on a day-to-day basis and that to manage this, resources and staff were allocated appropriately.

The Team were satisfied that they could now predict peak times and days for a full 12 months and had been carrying out a lot of analysis on the system. There were five different family group in Customer Services and the team were able to identify when there would be peak times in relation to these areas such as when council tax bills were sent out, or on a Monday morning when there were normally a higher number of calls coming into specific service areas. There were different peaks across the services and the team were able to predict this. A lot of work had also been carried out with service areas in relation to passing calls onto them. It was confirmed that calls were not forwarded to voice mails and that if the team were aware of a letter drop coming up for a specific department, then plans would be put in place to mitigate any predicted increase in calls. Agreements were also in place with service areas in relation how many calls would be put through for each day so that the call wait times would be reduced and for those customers calls were always to internal offices and were never outside of the council or to a voicemail. There were call handling targets for the team and it was noted that the national abandonment rate for contact centres was 15 percent and that the Council was adhering to this standard, but it was also understood that each call abandoned was a customer and there was ongoing analysis of why calls had been abandoned and what impact that might have.

Targets were set for each family group as the handling times for different types of queries varied and a call relating to housing benefits or business rates could take 20 to 30 minutes, whilst a garden waste call could take between five to ten minutes.

In relation to idle time, this was a large piece of work and different services could have different idle times. Monitoring was carried out in real time and section leaders were able to identity if a customer service officer had been idle for some time, section leaders were also able to contact the customer service officer directly if required. Wrap time was also considered in real time so and was different for the different service areas. Wrap time for an adult social care call would be much longer than wrap time for a purple bin inquiry. Wrap times were therefore set for each family group. Board thanked the Head of Customer Engagement and Registrars for the detailed responses to the questions.

Board queried whether support for parents and carers in relation to school admissions might be rolled out to other parts of the city such as Blakenhall where there was a high percentage of South Asian and BAME residents, and whether the information would be available in different languages. It was stated that at the moment, the availability of surgeries was being carried out on a risk assessment basis and that research was being undertaken as to where specific types of calls were coming from so that surgeries could be targeted; discussions were ongoing in relation to moving surgeries around and it was considered that the work in relation to this was just at the start of the journey with an aim to make sure that the service was accessible to all of our communities moving forwards. In relation to the use of different languages; this was an area that the team dealt with on a day-to-day basis and a translation service was used to ensure that there were no barriers to any communities.

In relation to the blue badges, it was normally a12 weeks turn around for an application however this could take longer if an occupational health assessment was required or if customers hadn't submitted the right documents. It was stated that there hadn’t been many complaints around blue badges. When enquiries were made in relation to blue badges, care was taken to ensure that the customer was fully aware of the information that needed to be submitted. Some members of the Board considered that the 12 week turnaround was still too long a wait for a straightforward blue badge application.  In relation to advertising and communicating this, the information was captured in the surgeries and most of the people that booked appointments for face-to-face meetings were those who were unable to complete the forms online.  It had been noted that information was spreading through word of mouth in relation to the surgeries, but it was agreed that further work could be done to promote and use these surgeries more. The suggestion was made that in relation to surgeries, the team could consider Tennent Management Organisation (TMO) areas as some areas did not have libraries and communication was not reaching these areas. The suggestion was also made that venues managed by Wolverhampton Homes could be considered. Board also considered that surgeries in relation to blue badges could be held in Tettenhall as it had the most elderly population in the city. 

A question was raised in relation to residents who had emailed the council and had not had a response and what was being done to address this issue to ensure that all email enquiries were responded to. In relation to the emails, it was stated that the team had an SLA with the service area that the emails were received on behalf of and that the SLA required the team to action the emails within two working days. However, if the e-mail needed a service specific response, then the customer services team would not manage that and some of those outstanding e-mails could be where the service hadn’t responded. Where there were repeat calls to customer services and customers stated that they had not received a response then the team could follow this up, but customer services did not case manage the calls. The data within the e-mails would flag up to show that these were repeat e-mails which would enable customer services to target the areas where the delays were occurring.

In terms of the future to improve the customer journey, Board noted that there appeared to be a long waiting list for Tele Care services. Board expressed concern that this might results in vulnerable residents waiting desperately for the required services.  It was stated that the customer services team did not manage the tele care system and this this was managed by Adult Social Care.

Resolved:      That the presentation be received.