Agenda item

To consider a report from the Director of Resources on performance of the Council’s contact centre and the work that is being undertaken in order to improve the end-to-end customer experience, address the issues that create avoidable contact and support service areas to ensure that council services are delivered in the most cost-effective way.

The submitted report of the Director of Resources presented the performance of the Council’s contact centre and the work that is being undertaken to improve the end-to-end customer experience, address the issues that create avoidable contact and support service areas to ensure that council services are delivered in the most cost-effective way.

In attendance at the meeting were:

·  Cllr Debra Coupar - Executive Member for Resources

·  Neil Evans - Director of Resources

·  Sonya McDonald - Head of Shared Services

·  Polly Cook – Chief Officer Sustainable Energy and Air Quality

·  Andrew Byrom - Head of Cloud and Platforms (IDS)

 The Director of resources introduced the report informing Board Members of the following points:

·  He thanked the staff for all their hard work, helpfulness and politeness even though they were working under pressure.

·  It was recognised that the service was not where it wanted to be with average call times at 10 minutes and 8% of calls abandoned.

·  The three key areas which the service was focussing on to improve were:

o  Resources

o  Alternative ways to access services; and

o  How services are delivered

·  It was noted that £5.4m was spent on the service and that additional resources were not a long-term solution. However, the service could not wait for process changes. The Board was advised that 9 new staff had been recruited since January 2022 with 18 additional staff to be recruited by the end of June 2022.

·  The service had an ambition to reduce call times to 5 minutes for general calls and 2 minutes for priority services

·  There had been a loss of staff to other services following promotion. It was the intention of the service to try and recruit staff in advance of staff leaving. It was acknowledged that this service had a young workforce with a high turnover of staff and it was recognised that motivation, wellbeing and the fact that this was a tough job which impacted on levels of absence were all factors.

·  The retention of staff was being looked at by introducing career pathways.

·  The was a commitment for the Council to retain and improve the contact centre and it was recognised that there was also a place for face-to-face contact with residents whilst also trying to divert callers to digital means of contact.

·  Looking forward the service planned:

o  To use e-forms to gather information systematically, with more information available on-line

o  The use of chat box technology 

o  Develop a digital approach informed by scale of impact and ease of delivery

o  Improve communication to the public, so reducing unnecessary contact

o  Provide clarity about what the contact centre can help with

o  Feedback to services about the causes of calls and work with services across the council to deal with service issues and thereby potentially reduce the volume of calls and provide better services enhanced by using intelligence gathered through the contact centre.

Responding to questions from Members, the Board were provided with the following information:

·  £5.4m is the budget for this service. Members were advised that a ‘standards diagnostic’ has been commissioned for the effective running of the service given the importance of this function. Information on this would be circulated to Members.

·  Some services such as Council Tax and Repairs could potentially be moved to on-line services.

·  Some Members were of the view that the report did not seem ambitious enough in relation to performance. The Executive Member for Resources said that this was a realistic report, and it was important that the service was transparent about what it can achieve in a short period. The service was looking to transform the way in which people engage with the council by using communications which people understand, use of different forms of access, including digital access. However, it was acknowledged that some people prefer the phone or face to face contact and that option will remain part of the offer to residents.

·  Exit interviews are undertaken with staff leaving the service to explore the reasons they are leaving. In most cases staff move on for promotional positions within the council. Members requested data in relation to staff leaving. Members noted that during 2020 during the pandemic very few people left the service, however, in 2021 people started to move posts and this had a knock-on effect to performance.

·  Customer satisfaction data pre -pandemic is different as the service is now using a different system from 5th January 2022. Comparison figures to be circulated to Members.

·  Members welcomed the report recognising the changes and challenges that contact centre has had to face.

·  Members were advised that work had been undertaken to improve the form used to report missed bins with tailored messages sent to provide the next date for collection. It was noted that the service is not currently in the position to use real-time news feeds.

·  It was acknowledged that the Leeds City Council website needed improvement, and this would be intrinsic to improving the customer experience and performance of the contact centre.

·  The service was looking at the use of Chat Bot technology to inform customers of how their query was progressing rather than answering questions.

·  The contact centre, employ 165 staff, the additional 18 staff would be a one-off cost to help reduce calls. The service was still expecting the natural turnover of staff.

The Chair in summing up the debate said that it was recognised that there were challenges around resources in IDS and that technology needed to be prioritised. It was also noted that process improvement needed to be high on the list of priorities across all directorates. Members were in agreement with the Chair’s suggestion that a letter should be written to CLT to raise the profile of the service and show the Boards support.

The Executive Member said that there was commitment within the organisation to improve the service provided by the contact centre from across all services, Corporate Leadership Team and Cabinet. It was noted that pre-pandemic data was different to the current data gathered as the service was using a new system for customer feedback and the current data will now be used going forward.

It was acknowledged that the Board would not be able to fit this item into the work schedule again this year. However, it would pass on to the subsequent Board for follow up work in the new municipal year.

RESOLVED – To note the content of the report.