Issue - meetings

Committee considered a report which provided information on the Council’s performance in relation to its customer service standards and effective management of complaints for the period 1^st October 2019 to 31^st March 2020 and the annual summary for 2019/20.

Customer Service Standards

Appendix 1 to the report provided a breakdown of the key customer service standards by quarterly period, together with the target and the cumulative performance for each standard.

Telephones - Target - 93% to be answered within 20 seconds

Appendix 2 to the report provided performance information between 1st October 2019 and 31st March 2020 by quarterly period.  The report identified that 98% (in both Quarter 3 and Quarter 4) of incoming calls were answered corporately within 20 seconds cumulatively.  The departments narrowly missing the key customer service standard of 93% for those periods were;

·         Housing and Community Safety 92% in Q3

·         Planning 92% in Q3.

Cumulatively, performance is 98% over 2019/20.

Contact Centres - Target - 80% of incoming calls to be answered within 20 seconds

Contact Centres achieved 80% and 76% for Q3 & 4 respectively (78% cumulatively).

Cumulatively performance was 78% over 2019/20, which fell just short of the target of 80%.

Revenues & Benefits - Target - 60% of incoming calls to be answered within 20 seconds

Revenues & Benefits ‘direct dial’ achieved 81% and 81% for Q3 & 4 respectively (81% cumulatively).

Cumulatively performance was 77% over 2019/20, which exceeded the target of 60%.

E-mails - Target 1 - 100% to be acknowledged within 1 working day and Target 2 - 100% to be replied to within 8 working days   

6,488 email enquiries (3,388 in Q3 and 3,100 in Q4) were received from the public through enquiries@bolsover.gov.uk - all were acknowledged within 1 working day and 99% were replied to in full within 8 working days.

Emailing remained the popular method of contacting the Council with more e-mails received by the public in the reporting period compared to the same period in 2018/19 of 4,798 emails.

Face to face monitoring - Target – 99% not kept waiting longer than 20 minutes at a Contact Centre

Waiting times were monitored for 1 week (w/c 15^th July 2019) in 2019/20 due to the Contact Centre being closed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Of the 813 customers who called into the Contact Centres, 812 (99.9%) waited less than 20 minutes to be served.  This exceeded the corporate target and demonstrated excellent service.

During the same period, 199 callers were served on Meet & Greet at The Arc, bringing the total number of callers served during the monitoring period to 1012.

Compliments, Comments and Complaints

Compliments

Written compliments received for the period by department were set out at Appendix 3 (A) attached to the report.

In total 218 written compliments were received from customers who appreciated excellent service.  These included 44 for Leisure, 35 for Streetscene, 35 for Revenues & Benefits and 26 for Housing.  As some compliments cross cut departments, the number did not correspond with the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 14