Agenda item

(1)       Mrs Oliver and Mr Smith presented a report which provided information for Members on the performance, staffing levels and funding of the Contact Centre and current developments.  Mrs Oliver stated that Contact Kent was now connected to all non emergency contact centres in the County giving the ability to directly transfer calls.  They were moving towards being able to answer queries without having to transfer the customer.  The service was also piloting remote working from Gateways or home.  There was a member of staff from Contact Kent in each of the Gateways, this was to help with consistency between Gateways and Contact Kent and also career development for staff. It was important that Members and officers had confidence in the service provided by Contact Kent. 

(2)       The Chairman referred to a visit, by some of the Members of this Committee, to the Contact Centre before the meeting. He commended the good atmosphere, professionalism of the staff and also the excellent training provided.

(3)       In response to a question on the potential to lose the benefits of team working by providing the service remotely, Mr Smith explained that even when staff were working remotely they would need to come back to the office to attend training and team meetings.  He agreed that if there was too much remote working there was a danger that the productive culture of the Contact Centre could be lost.  They would therefore limit the numbers of working remotely at any time and appreciated the need to keep a balance of remote working and centre based staff.  He acknowledged that remote working was a way of retaining specialist staff and also gave additional flexibility during bad weather. 

(4)       Mr Smith explained that the average waiting time for calls to be answered was checked every week to ensure that it did not disguise excessive waiting times.  However, some calls that required an input from skilled staff sometime necessitated a longer waiting time.  He emphasised that the key measure was quality of service for the customer.

(5)       In relation to the possibility of having a single phone number for all calls, Mr Smith explained that the challenge with this was that there would then need to have an Interactive Voice Response system requiring the caller to select options or to have all customer services staff able to answer every call. Currently the most effective method of filtering calls was to use different numbers, but this was an issue that would continue to be discussed.

(6)       Mr Smith confirmed that there was extensive use of mystery shoppers, and that newly trained staff were mystery shopped by other members of staff.   Kent Connects was a member of the top 50 contact centres in the Country which involved using 400 mystery shopper calls a month to bench mark against Public and Private sector centres, looking at soft skills and resources.

(7)       Ms Oliver explained that the aim was to have as much initial contact in one place to avoid passing customers around the organisation or between organisations.  She confirmed that KCC following a change in contract was now receiving income from the 0845 number, which had previously been received by a private company.  The aspiration was to move towards a “03” prefix however that would not have income attached.

RESOLVED that: - (a) the current high quality of customer service and performance of the Contact Centre be noted;

(b)       the transfer of additional services into and through the contact centre, maximising efficiencies, service quality and customer satisfaction be supported

(c)        the direction that assessment undertaken by Contact Kent as ‘deep’ as possible, reducing the need for future contact as measured by the first contact resolution rate be supported.