Rostrvm Solutions’ survey uncovers inconsistent local government contact centre service level targets
Woking (UK), February 2008 – The New Performance Framework for Local Authorities & Local Authority Partnerships sets new indicators for customer contact performance including reducing avoidable contact. But how well are local authorities doing today?
The anecdotal evidence is that commercial call centres are continually enhancing their services - for example telephone calls will be answered in seconds, emails will be responded to in hours - but public sector organisations are lagging behind. To gain an understanding of the reality behind the anecdotes Rostrvm Solutions conducted a benchmarking survey into the current and future measurement of 'success' in Local Authority call centres.
The survey showed that in many ways Local Government customer service centres are leading the way in providing open multimedia access to service with over 90% of surveyed centres offering at least one medium in addition to ‘traditional’ telephone access.
Whilst service level standards are commonly in place setting targets for the most basic target - answering inbound telephone calls - less than half (43%) of survey respondents have a target for returning calls. The question must arise – What will happen if an enquiry necessitates a return call and the enquirer does not have an expectation of when a response will be received? The risk is that the enquiry would be repeated, leading to an avoidable contact.
It was particularly surprising to observe that, whilst 78% of responding authorities operate in conjunction with an associated, interactive web site, only a quarter have a target for responding to web enquiries.
Results showed that local government call centres are more focussed on day-to-day operational issues than establishing consistent service levels; key challenges include meeting the increasing customer demand, managing seasonal overload and training new staff
The full survey results are available at
http://www.rostrvm.com/lgsurveyresults
