Agenda item

The Customer Service, Complaints and Standards Manager explained the report was to provide information on the Council’s performance in relation to its customer service standards.

For the Revenues & Benefits Telephone line, the target for ‘direct dial’ Revenues incoming calls to be answered within 20 seconds was 60%; for Q4 2023/24 this was 84% and the cumulative performance for 2023/24 was 79% - both exceeding the target.  The target for ‘direct dial’ Benefits incoming calls to be answered within 20 seconds was 78%; for Q4 2023/24 this was 93% and cumulative performance for 2023/24 was 92% - both exceeding the target.

For the Contact Centres telephone line, the target for incoming calls to be answered within 20 seconds was 75%; for Q4 2023/24 this was 75% and the cumulative performance for 2023/24 was 80% - on or exceeding the target.

For E-mails, target 1 was for 100% of emails to be acknowledged within 1 working day, and for target 2 for 100% to be replied to within 8 working days.  For Q4 2023/24, 8,804 email enquiries from the public were received through enquiries@bolsover.gov.uk; all were acknowledged within one working day; and 100% were replied to in full within 8 working days cumulatively for Q4 2023/24.

For Live Chat, which remained a relatively new service, the target was 75% of incoming Live Chats to be answered within 20 seconds.  Contact Centres achieved 91% for Q4 2023/24 and the cumulatively performance for 2023/24 was 93% - both exceeding the target.

It was noted for E-mails and Live Chat, handling these communications took longer on average than traditional methods.

For the Corporate Telephone Standard, the total received calls to the authority (direct dial internal/external), the target was 93% to be answered within 20 seconds. Cumulatively, performance was 87% for 2023/24 – below target.  For incoming calls not answered, cumulative performance was 10% for 2023/24 – above the target of 5%.

For Compliments, a total of 55 written compliments were received during Q4 2023/24.  For Comments, 12 were received and 100% of these were acknowledged and passed to their respective departments within the target time of 3 working days.  For Stage 1 Complaints, a total of 45 were recorded – Customer Information System had 33, Open Housing Repairs system had 12 – for Q4 2023/24, 89% of which were responded to within the Council’s customer standard of 3 working days.  For Stage 2 Complaints and M.P. enquiries, 26 formal complaints were registered in Q4 2023/24 42 M.P. enquiries during the same period – 100% Stage 2 Complaints and 100% M.P. enquiries were responded to within 15 working days.  For Stage 3 Complaints, 9 were received and all responded to within 20 working days.  1 Ombudsman Complaint was received in Q4 2023/24, but no fault was found by the Housing Ombudsman.

The Chair noted there were clearly some obstacles present, with more needing to be done, but thanked the team for their very good work.

Mover by Councillor Vicky Wapplington and seconded by Councillor Louise Fox

RESOLVED that the report be noted.