Issue - meetings

The Customer Standards and Complaints Officer presented the report to the Committee to provide information on the Council’s performance in relation to its customer service standards and the number of Compliments, Comments and Complaints received for Quarter 3 2025/26 (1^st October 2025 to 31^st December 2025).

A breakdown of the key customer service standards by quarterly period, together with the target and the cumulative performance for each standard, was attached at Appendixes 1 and 2 of the report.

Revenues had achieved 88% of incoming calls answered within 20 seconds for Quarter 3 2025/26 (target 70%).

Benefits had achieved 90% of incoming calls answered within 20 seconds for Quarter 3 2025/26 (target 80%).

In Quarter 3 2025/26, Revenues and Benefits had received 6,155 emails – all acknowledged within 1 working day.

For Quarter 3 2025/26, Contact Centres had achieved: 81% of incoming calls answered within 20 seconds (target 75%); abandoned 2% of incoming calls (target less than 3%); and the average waiting time was 26 seconds (target not exceeding 30 seconds).

In the same period, Contact Centres had acknowledged all 6,560 email enquiries received within 1 working day (meeting the target of 100%), with 99.7% of emails replied to within 8 working days (target was 100%).

Contact Centres had answered 87% of incoming Live Chats within 20 seconds for Quarter 3 2025/26 (target 90%), with 557 chats answered out of 562 in total.  In Quarter 3 2025/26, all 4 Contact Centres and The Arc’s Meet & Greet Reception Desk had received 6,441 visitors.

Face-to-face monitoring took place week commencing 17^th November 2025 to measure waiting times – 572 customers had visited during that week, with an average waiting time of 1.2 minutes (target was seeing 100% of customers within 20 minutes).

76 Compliments had been received during Quarter 3 2025/26, with Go! Active receiving 2 Customer Feedback Form Compliments within this time.

8 Comments had been received with all acknowledged and passed to the respective department within the target time of 5 working days during Quarter 3 2025/26.  Go! Active had received 10 Customer Feedback Form Comments within this time.

57 Stage 1 Complaints had been recorded in Quarter 3 2025/26, with 12 M.P. Enquiries received within this time.  100% of Stage 1 Complaints and 100% M.P. Enquiries had been responded to within the Council’s Customer Service Standard of 10 working days – the average response time for Stage 1 Complaints was 4.5  working days.

8 Stage 2 Complaints had been recorded in Quarter 3 2025/25.  100% of Stage 2 Complaints had been responded to within the Council’s Customer Service Standard of 20 working days – the average response time for Stage 2 Complaints was 10 working days.

No Local Government Ombudsman Complaints had been received during Quarter 3 2025/26.

The following service improvement examples:

·       service requests would now be included in comment and complaintacknowledgements, so a customer was aware the issue at hand was being dealt with as well as a Complaint raised;

·       the Gas team were  ...  view the full minutes text for item 47