REPORT FROM THE CABINET MEMBER FOR CUSTOMERS AND PARISH EMPOWERMENT

 

TO THE MEETING OF FULL COUNCIL

ON 16 MAY 2007

 

1.                  PARISH DEVOLUTION PROJECT

 

The Parish Development officer has started her period of secondment this week. Initial focus is to work with the 2 quality parishes of Wootton and Brading to develop what services could be devolved and to work up proposals, with the other relevant officers, for a new toilet block in each parish. The second phase will be to work with other quality parishes to see how and what further services could be devolved.

 

We remain the County with the highest percentage of quality parishes in the country (20%) and this has been acknowledged as an exemplar case by a report commissioned by DEFRA and undertaken by the University of Wales. We continue to work hard to achieve a target of 100% quality parishes by 2010.

 

2.                  CALL CENTRE PERFORMANCE

 

The Call Centre’s performance for April has remained consistent with recent months and although the team has recently had a number of vacancies the relief staff have been brought in to cover the level of resources required.

 

Monday is one of the Centre’s busiest days calls can increase by an average of 25% (approximately 500 calls) and although relief staff are used to handle this peak, there are a number of occasions when the sheer number of calls out weighs the number of resources available.  Further investigation is underway by the Call Centre Manager to review this workflow.

 

PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENTS

                                                      April 06                       April 07

Abandoned call rate                                 20.5%                         7.8%

Average seconds taken to pick up a call  26                          13

 

Resolution rate for services that the call centre has partnered

 

                              Planning                     38.5                            39.5

                              Highways                   65.8                            71.3

                              Housing                      57.4                            67.4

                              Education                   34.2                            26.4

                              Registrars                  73.9                            76.2

 

Satisfaction rating (which commenced December 06)                      100%

 

IMPROVEMENTS

 

Work is underway to review the current processes within the Call Centre operation and already there have been improvements to the staff’s work patterns that has ensured that abandoned call rates are not affected during handovers ie: lunches and breaks. 

 

Further investigations have revealed that the current process for recording abandoned call rates also includes the ‘out of hours’ calls, which are logged as abandoned, giving an unbalanced score sheet for the team, therefore it is intended that further reports will cover operational times only. 

 

MEDIUM/LONG TERM

 

Part of the work expected to be in the High Impact Project – Getting it right for the customer will have an impact on how the Centre will develop and it expected to cover:

 

·        8 – 8 Opening times

·        CRM development – integrating with more services

·        Service partnering

 

 

 

Cllr Jilly Wood

Cabinet Member for Customers and Parish Empowerment