Issue - meetings

To receive a presentation from Simon Pollock, Interim Director of Customer Experience.

RECEIVED the presentation slides on Customer Experience.

NOTED

1.    Simon Pollock (Interim Director of Customer Experience) and Lee Shelsher (Head of Customer Solutions) provided a review of the past year, project updates, plans moving forward, and customer approach.

2.    In respect of Libraries, the growth in online offer and activity was highlighted, and the new initiatives. The growing trend in libraries physical visits was continuing.

3.    Community hubs contact with customers; the community line use; call demand and webchat volumes; and the performance of the contact centre were reported for 2022/23.

4.    The new Council website had been launched one year ago and the analytics so far had been good.

5.    A project update was provided on CRM/CMS, and service improvements were highlighted.

6.    Simon Pollock had prepared a wider Customer Service Strategy, and promoted data driven continuous improvement of customer services. Restructure of the organisation would include a new Directorate of Environment and Communities from 3 April 2023.

7.    In response to Members’ queries regarding customer satisfaction monitoring, it was confirmed that ‘mystery shoppers’ and sampling were used. If there was a systemic issue or failure, it would be possible to put right the cause. Other issues may require better communication by the Council.

8.    It was confirmed there had been work on the issue of missed bin collections. The technology in waste collection vehicles’ cabs needed to correspond with the contact centre, for example on road closures, to enable a proactive answer. There was an aim that status updates be provided to residents in advance. In the new organisational structure, the refuse service was moved into the new Environment and Communities directorate for this reason. It would also cover street scene and parking which were drivers of dissatisfaction, so the customer service could be closely monitored.

9.    In response to Members’ queries regarding residents’ dissatisfaction with the website and complaints about difficulty getting through to the contact centre or being cut off, it was confirmed there were planned improvements to unified communications and consolidation of the telephone system. Soft testing was taking place currently. This would be a whole organisation system. Unified communications would also introduce a universal queue of all requests and monitor response times. Feedback was sought from residents who had unpleasant experiences using the website. Work continued on monitoring of the bounce rate: when customers started a website transaction but did not go on to complete it. It had shown that more people were now committing to transactions and these were going through successfully.