Agenda item

(Service Director (Customer Services)) To consider the attached report.

The Customer Services Director, R Pavey presented a report to the Select Committee on what our customers are telling us.

The report updated Members on the feedback customers were providing on the services they received from the Council. The feedback included customer satisfaction performance, compliments and complaints. As the customer engagement process developed through a new customer service strategy the feedback will incorporate a more comprehensive view from residents, businesses and visitors.

Customer Satisfaction was currently measured via feedback provided through the Govmetric solution. Whilst this was useful in terms of feedback provided for a range of services via telephone, e-mail and web, it was not exhaustive in terms of every service through these channels, nor could it measure satisfaction of those who have not needed to contact us. Officers are working towards solutions that will provide the Council with a more holistic measure.

The feedback results from Govmetric for the period 1 June 2019 to 31 August 2019 were:

At the last meeting of the Select Committee more information was requested and the statistics show how customers were using our new website:

• There were 309 published pages at 31 August 2019, this did not include news stories or search results. There was a 41% decrease from the 525 website pages at 31 August 2018. This demonstrated a leaner website with redundant pages having been removed.

• During the 7 months from 1 February 2019 to 31 August 2019 there were 585,440 visits, an increase of 6.2% on the same 7-month period in 2018.

• Over the same comparative period the number of page views decreased by 23.2%. this shows that in the main, and notwithstanding some issues identified in paragraph 3 above visitors are achieving their business in a more direct website journey.

Councillor J H Whitehouse asked for a more detailed report showing areas of complaints and would also like to see the new report quoting numbers and not percentages.

The Customer Services Director advised that the column before the percentages was the actual number of complaints which was then put into percentages in the nest column. He also added that comparing the number of contacts the Council had the complaints were very small.

Councillor Wixley queried pages 30 and 31 of the report and asked the Customer Services Director why in Stage 1, Street naming and numbering there were 0% but in the Stage 2 column the figure was 2.86% and how this had come about. He also asked about page 32 Loughton Fairmead, Car parking and that it stated not resolved 1, could he also have some explanation on what that was about as he was the ward Member for that area.

The Customer Services Director advised that he would get some clarification and report back at the next meeting.

Resolved:

That the Customer Satisfaction report was noted.