Annex A2

Report on the Council’s Telephone System

Background

At the Overview & Scrutiny Committee meeting on 30th July 2003, a question was asked in relation to Performance Indicator P3. The question as detailed in Minute 22 of that meeting was as follows:

“ A Member enquired whether it was necessary to retain the standard recorded messages on the telephone system, and he requested a brief written report on the telephone system generally to include details of the stage at which the targets were measured from. In reply to a further query, it was agreed that statistics concerning the number of e-mails received could be included in the same report”.

Brief description of the phone system

The phone system that was introduced at the start of the year is called Speakeasy from a company called VIP. This system allows users to make best use of call handling by creating call queues. These link staff together so that calls on a particular subject can be made available to a number of people. However, those staff can be part of many queues simultaneously, allowing multi skilling of staff (and hence better use of resource) as well as allowing a critical mass to develop so that callers can be distributed amongst a number of staff, minimising waiting times. The phone system captures a lot of information about the calls, which allows the Council to understand customer call patterns better and as such make sure resource matches demand, as well as understanding our call performance. For example we know from the data we have that Monday is busier then Friday, and mornings busier than afternoons. It would therefore be useful to change employee working patterns to address this – to have some staff who work say, 9.30 to 2.45 Monday to Wednesday. Before we had this kind of data all we knew was that the phone rang a lot at certain times, but had little idea of how many customers were frustrated by getting the engaged tone. Staff do not all need to be in the same location to be part of a queue. For example when staff were absent in the advice centre through sickness we were able to ask helpline staff to log into the advice centre queue (as well as the helpline queue) so that we could cover. Those staff did not have to relocate to the advice centre. This allows the creation of a “virtual” call centre, spread over a number of different locations and units. So far there are queues set up on our major customer contact points – Help Line, Advice Centre, Neighbourhood Services, Council Tax, Benefits and Development Control. At the moment most calls go to the Help Line where the enquiry will be answered if possible (we fulfil up to 30% of calls there) but if not, calls are transferred to the appropriate department/person. Exploitation of the phone system is still in early days. Getting proper reporting of call data (number of calls, when customers call, queue length etc) is progressing as well as the change of culture to getting staff willing to work in a new way. This involves making sure we know how to speak to customers on the phone (using techniques of call monitoring & marking to improve performance of staff) as well as getting staff to proactively log in and out of call patterns to “bust” queues. We need to get all services up to the same/consistent standard and this includes making sure the links between the various departments (messages, hand-off processes, voicemail etc) work well. But, while there is still a lot to do, we have seen some dramatic improvements to the service provided. In the past 3 months (June, July and August) customers contacting us had to wait an average of 12 seconds before their call was answered. This compares with an average wait before being answered of 38 seconds for the same period in 2002 and we are dealing consistently with about 30% of calls at the first point of contact. In our long-term vision this will rise to 80% with customers only having to call one number for most of our services.

Messages on the phone system

It is my opinion that we do need messages on the phone system. There are a number of reasons for this:

 The messages keep callers informed of the progress of their call;  An upfront message informs the caller of where they have called, ensures a consistent greeting, and avoids our agents having to say it. This equates to about 10 seconds worth of time, which if we consider the 900 calls that we can take a day on the Help Line alone equals 2.5 hours worth of time saved per day. Given that we only have 8 staff on the Help Line, this is a reasonable amount of FTE;  If the machine did not say the message our staff would, and the caller would be dealt with no quicker;  In addition to this saving it avoids the need for staff to constantly repeat a message, (a syndrome of call centres is repetitive voice injury!);  There is a percentage of calls – up to 30 a day (3%) where callers just put the phone down prior to being put through – I assume they do not want to speak to us or have mis-dialled – much better that a machine deals with this rather than wasting staff time;  The average time to answer is just 12 seconds so they do not have to wait long;  Some customers appreciate the reassurance of knowing where they have called (it is the repetitive callers who may find this frustrating who are a small percentage of those who call us);  If a member of staff is not available to answer the call straightaway, the caller should be told that we have their call, and that we are in the process of dealing with it (and only a message can do that). There is more work to be done with the message system however. It has been put together when set up and is now in need of end-to-end review after the bedding in period. I am doing this. One issue that arises is the gender of the message voice (it changes from a woman to a man) and the messages while on hold or being transferred. I am undertaking that review. For Councillors (who by the nature of their role call frequently – although numbers of calls are only a small percentage of the total) a service has been introduced where the caller is put through to staff with no message. Targets

The key target of performance on the phone is measurement of queue time and speed of answer. This is a measure of the time from the moment the call is picked up by our phone system (which is once the customer has finished dialling and is “connected”) until the call is put through to a member of staff. So, a customer listening to a message counts as queue time. Each individual handoff to another queue then generates its own queue time again – for example it may be 11 seconds before the customer speaks to a person on the Help Line, but if the enquiry cannot be resolved, a transfer of the call may be required which may lead to another queue of say 7 seconds. However, that is counted as a separate queue, and not added to the 11 seconds already notched up.

E-mails

We receive about 7 e-mails from customers a day. Since July 2002 there have been 1600 and the daily trend is on the increase. I am in the process of reviewing the treatment of e-mails with customers by the Council to ensure our approach is consistent, and there will be a recommendation on this soon. We will also look at our management and development of text messaging as this is a favoured route for some people people.

Andrew Bircher Head of Customer Services Services to the Community Department