Agenda item

To consider the attached report.

R Pavey, Service Director (Customer Services), gave an overview on Customer Services and what our Customers were telling us.

One of the key corporate work programmes that this Committee was responsible for scrutinising was customer excellence which was putting customers at the heart of everything we do and on where the Council met customer needs, recognising positive feedback where it was received and acknowledging there were opportunities for improvements. The Council would be developing its customer engagement process as part of a new Customer Service Strategy would be reported at a future meeting.

There were elements of engagement across the authority on-going which needed to be pulled together to provide a holistic view. This process will increasingly inform the content of future reports and will provide a key resource to enable the Council to design its services around its customers.

The report provided feedback received by customers since 1 April 2019 and related to the Govmetric feedback which was received via contacts through telephone, email and the website. The feedback was only possible via Govmetric for the customer contacts that were handled via the Customer Contact centre and Revenues, which have the appropriate systems in place. The more services that moved into the contact centre the more comprehensive this type of feedback would be. The feedback provided both negative and positive feedback from customers as below:

Telephone

                                                            Good               Average           Poor

Number of respondents                      999                  38                    8

Percentage of respondents                96%                 4%                   1%

Overall Rating - Good

Web

                                                            Good               Average           Poor

Number of respondents                      84                    41                    259

Percentage of respondents                22%                 11%                 67%

Overall Rating - Average

Email

                                                            Good               Average           Poor

Number of respondents                      185                  12                    67

Percentage of respondents                70%                 5%                   25%

Overall Rating - Average

The Web feedback remained the area where there were 259 instances of negative feedback but it needed to be seen in the context of over 300,000 website visits since 1 April 2019 which therefore represented approximately 1% dissatisfaction. Officers had noted that as the website matured the amount of negative feedback had fallen substantially. The current feedback identified issues such as problems around paying rent or finding out how to report or apply for items. This had been recognised and work was ongoing to solve these issues.

In April and May 2019 there had been 25 complaints submitted to the Council, 23 had been resolved and 2 have progressed to stage 2, which related to Council Tax and Planning.

Whilst no particular area of concern or opportunity could be specifically identified from the report, the customer engagement process would be brought together corporately and evolve in the future to bring customer need closer to the heart of future design. This work will be brought back to the next Select Committee for Members to scrutinise and make recommendations accordingly.

R Pavey added that Members were also customers of this service and that he would engage with all Members in the consultation process to make sure Members were happy with the service.

The Chairman commented on the figures for the telephone contact and stated that out of 999 calls only 8 complained that they were unhappy and thought this was remarkable. She also stated that customers wanted interaction with staff and not use the website or email.

R Pavey stated that the Govmetric system was used by over 100 other Councils around the Country and those figures put this Council in the top 10.

Councillor Bedford commented on the 18 compliments that the Council had received and expressed that this was an achievement and deserved to be mentioned.

Councillor Brookes stated that she had attended a meeting last year where the Officer advised how many people accessed the website on a mobile device and she wondered if Mr Pavey had that information to hand or could he provide it at the next meeting.

R Pavey advised that although he did not have that information to hand, he would be able to provide that information at the next meeting.

RESOLVED:

(1)        That the Select Committee noted the report;

(2)        That an update of ‘What are our Customers Telling Us’ would be reported at the next meeting; and

(3)        That figures would be provided at the next meeting of how many people accessed the website on a mobile device.