Agenda item

Committee considered a report which provided the Council’s performance in relation to its Customer Service Standards and the effective management of complaints for the period 1st October 2020 to 31st March 2021.

Customer Service Standards - An appendix 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 – The target was 93% to be answered within 20 seconds.  Cumulatively, performance was 99% over 2020/21.

Members were asked to note that telephone calls diverted to staff working from home were not being recorded and the Customer Standards and Complaints Officer was currently undertaking a piece of work to see if these calls could be qualified.

Contact Centres – The target was 80% of incoming calls to be answered within 20 seconds.  Cumulatively performance was 97% over 2020/21 which exceeded the target of 80%.

Revenues & Benefits - The target was 60% of incoming calls to be answered within 20 seconds.  Cumulatively performance was 76% over 2020/21, which exceeded the target of 60%.

E-mails – Target 1 was 100% to be acknowledged within 1 working day and Target 2 was 100% to be replied to within 8 working days.  8,510 email enquiries were received from the public through enquiries@bolsover.gov.uk  and all were acknowledged within one working day.  99% were replied to in full within 8 working days.

The volume of e-mails had increased compared to the same period in 2020/21 of 6,488.  Email remained a popular method of contact, particularly due to other contact channels being unavailable for some of the period of monitoring (e.g. face to face and webchat).

Face to face monitoring – No monitoring had been undertaken due to ongoing Covid-19 pandemic arrangements.

Compliments – 105 written compliments were received during the period which covered various departments.  The Customer Standards and Complaints Officer had also passed these compliments on to the Head of Paid Service.

Comments – 39 comments were received and all 39 were acknowledged and passed to the respective department within the target time of 3 working days. 

Complaints – Frontline resolution (stage one) – An appendix to the report showed the number of Frontline Resolution complaints received by the Contact Centre service and recorded on the Customer Information System (Firmstep) by department.  The customer service standard for responding to these complaints was 3 working days. 

Complaints - Formal Investigation (stage two) – 123 formal investigation complaints were received during the period.  97% were responded to within the customer service standard of 15 working days.  Covid-19 restrictions had impacted on performance during the earlier part of 2020/21, as some staff were either unavailable due to sickness or redeployed to other duties.  However, this appeared to have improved.

Internal Review (stage three) – 17 stage three complaints were received during the period, all of which were responded to within the standard of 20 working days. 

Ombudsman – During the period, 3 cases were received.  One decision was that the Ombudsman could not investigate the complaint because the complainant had already appealed to the Planning Inspector.  The remainder were awaiting a decision.

Members requested that for future reports, the details relating to each complaint be included and split between justified and unjustified as this would be helpful to Members when considering their Review work.

The Customer Standards and Complaints Officer also noted that a complaint could be partially justified and this was currently a category in the report.

In response to a Member’s comment, the Customer Standards and Complaints Officer

advised that the recorded message on the Council’s main telephone number would be altered and reduced as normal working practices resumed.

Moved by Councillor Ray Heffer and seconded by Councillor Andrew Joesbury

RESOLVED that the report be noted.