Agenda item

Committee considered a report regarding the Council’s performance in relation to its customer service standards and the number of compliments, comments and complaints for the period 1^st April 2019 to 30^th September 2019.

The report identified the following;

Telephones – corporate (target - 93% to be answered within 20 seconds)

98% of incoming calls were being answered corporately within 20 seconds cumulatively.  Streetscene Services narrowly missed the target in Q1 (92%).

Contact Centres (target - 80% of incoming calls to be answered within 20 seconds)

Contact Centres achieved 76% and 78% for quarters 1 & 2 respectively (78% cumulatively).  This was a significant improvement on the same reporting period in 2018/19 (73%).

Revenues & Benefits (direct dial) (target - 60% of incoming calls to be answered within 20 seconds)

79% and 81% was achieved for quarters 1 & 2 respectively (80% cumulatively).

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

7,459 email enquiries from the public were received through enquiries@bolsover.gov.uk (3,750 in Q1 and 3,709 in Q2).  All were acknowledged within one working day and 99% were replied to in full within 8 working days.  E-mails still appeared to be an increasingly popular method of contact with the Council.  6,026 e-mails were received in the same period in 2018/19.

Face to face monitoring (target – 99% not kept waiting longer than 20 minutes at a Contact Centre)

Waiting times were monitored during week commencing 15th July 2019 where 813 customers called into the Contact Centres.  812 (99.88%) waited less than 20 minutes to be served. 

Compliments, Comments and Complaints

Compliments

In total 111 written compliments were received during the period (123 were received in the same period in 2018/19).  Some compliments cross cut departments.

Comments

16 comments were received, acknowledged and passed to the respective departments for consideration within the target time of 3 working days.  Some comments raised valid issues and cross cut departments and as such were responded to corporately. 

Complaints

Frontline resolution (stage one)

The customer service standard for responding to these complaints was 3 working days.  91% were responded to within this timescale which was a significant improvement from the 85% achieved in the same period in 2018/19.

Formal Investigation (stage two)

98 complaints (some cross cut departments) were received during this period.  97 (99%) were responded to within the customer service standard of 15 working days.  The remaining 1 was partly regarding a service provided by another organisation and was responded to within 19 working days. 

There were no trends for this period.

Internal Review (stage three)

These were complainants who had made a stage two complaint but still felt dissatisfied.  During the period, 28 stage three complaints were received, 93% (26) of which were responded to within standard.  As some complaints cross cut departments, the total did not correspond with the total above when viewed in this way.

Ombudsman

During the period, 8 decisions were received from the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman of ‘closed after initial enquiries’, 1 of ‘not upheld: no maladministration’ and 1 of ‘upheld: maladministration and injustice’.  The latter complaint was complex and the criticism was with regard to a delay in putting the person back on the housing waiting list.  One decision was received of ‘close the case’from the Housing Ombudsman (HO) and another of ‘close the case’ for a review of the same complaint as at 18^th November 2019.

The Customer Standards and Complaints Officer advised the meeting that all telephone calls to the Council were being managed by Clowne Contact Centre and there were also 3 new customer service advisors in place.

In response to a Member’s question, the Customer Standards and Complaints Officer advised the meeting that in relation to percentages worked out – these were rounded down if they were under 0.5% and rounded up if above 0.5%.

Moved by Councillor Andrew Joesbury and seconded by Councillor Clive Moesby

RESOLVED that the report be noted.

The Customer Standards and Complaints Officer left the meeting.