Customer Services Annual Review 2009 – 2010

During 2009/10 we have continued to invest in our staff training with Institute of Customer Service (ICS) awards. Out of 43 staff in the service 22 have achieved an award and a further 13 are ready to undertake an award on the next cohort, which commences this year. 

We have completed a service review of the Emergency Control Room function, which has resulted in the Fire/Intruder alarm service being transferred to an outside supplier, and the remainder of the service being managed by Adult Care. This will achieve savings in the service, as the longer-term ambition is to have a joint call handling and warden role, which will assist staff in having a better understanding of the clients on a personal level. It is felt this knowledge will reduce unnecessary warden visits and therefore make the service more efficient.

In order to use resources as efficiently as possible in the Contact Centre this year we have introduced Auto dialler speech recognition software to replace the internal switchboard function. This software allows calls received for a specific named person to be directed to that person automatically without operator intervention. We have seen internal switchboard calls to the contact centre reduce by over 60% following introduction of the system. This equates to an approximate saving of £1,000 since introduction in November 2009 and rises to £3,200 over a year.

In September 2009 the Tell Us Once initiative gained central government approval for national roll out. Tameside was a pilot Authority in this initiative and we have now mainstreamed the service within Customer Services. Customers are able to attend multiple Customer Service Centres and tell us once of the birth of a child or the death of a relative and we will advise both local and central government agencies. This benefits the customer in terms of time contacting many separate agencies and also, particularly with bereavement, the stress of having to continually repeat information about the death of a relative. In addition we have the opportunity to offer other council services to customers accessing the Tell Us Once service. As a pilot authority we will now be assisting other Local Authorities as they seek to introduce Tell Us Once in their organisations.

Customer Insight is a valuable tool that can be used to divide customers into discrete groups that share the same characteristics that cause them to have similar needs. This information can then be used to identify specific segments of the community in order to target information/services to them in ways that they respond to. This year an AGMA wide group, led by Bolton, has been awarded some funding to pilot a specific piece of customer insight work. We sit on this group and have contributed to developing the process and determining the outcomes, which will be used as a blueprint for others to use to take this initiative forward. The project targets families on low income and is looking at all the services that are available and likely to be required for this segment of the community.

Another AGMA wide initiative we are part of is the Collaborative Services Group. This group is seeking out ways that we can work collaboratively across Greater Manchester in order to achieve efficiencies. Some of the strands of work within the customer services area include channel migration, service standards, customer profiling, CRM, training academy. The aim of the project is to work together and potentially save costs on development work etc

We are heavily involved in the Tameside DRIVE initiative and have played a large part in scoping out the “Improving the Customer Experience” strand of the programme. This initiative seeks to examine the customer experience with a view to making this more efficient for customers contacting the council and also in terms of cost to deliver the service. The programme will be implemented over the next 3 years and will concentrate on a review of customer insight, examination of Tameside’s approach to CRM, a review of the access points and appointment and contact management, a review of the assess and decide processes and channel migration.

Performance in Customer Services has again been excellent this year with consistently high satisfaction levels achieved with both wait times and the way the officers dealt with the enquiry. Although we were slightly below our target of answering 80% of calls within 20 seconds we still answered 76.8% of calls within 20 seconds despite of increased calls due to the roll out of managed collections and higher volumes of calls generated by the unusually severe winter weather. We also successfully answered 96.4% of all calls presented in the Call Centre, which meant an abandonment level of only 3.4%. We marginally missed our target for wait time in Ashton Customer Services Centre however still achieving an average wait time of 8.31 minutes against a target of 8.20 minutes.

Contact Information
Send us a Message	Customer Services Tameside MBC Council Offices Wellington Road Ashton under Lyne OL6 6DL  View local map
0161 342 8355
0161 342 3070
0161 342 2283