The Committee work programme had been amended to include a report on the Customer Contact Centre. The Customer Services Transformation Outline and Detailed Business Cases which had been agreed in 2013 were appended to the report.

The Detailed Business Case had identified that the Council was offering very traditional outdated opportunities for customers to access its services. The concept of the new Contact Centre was to move away from the traditional reception/telephone service offered by the Council to a new model that offered a wide range of modern and efficient access channels for customers.

The service would consist of three main strands as follows;

· A modern and customer friendly website with increasing options to transact on-line with the Council;

· An effective and efficient telephone service with direct access to trained advisors able to resolve most queries without the need to refer the customer on.

· The Contact Centre would also handle other contact channels such as post, emails, text messaging and social media.

In addition to the customer benefits identified above the Business Case proposed that savings of £250k were to be achieved through a number of methods as set out below;

· Lower transaction costs by encouraging customers to shift to less costly contact channels. e.g. Self-Service

· Increased economies of scale through generic front of house and telephony services, achieved by migrating enquiry handling and related staff roles into the Customer Service, and reducing overall staff numbers required.

· Streamlined processes for more efficient enquiry handling.

The Contact Centre was opened 23 April 2014 as part of a ‘soft launch’ with a target date for full implementation of 1 April 2015.

Following a review of the Detailed Business Case by Officers it had been established that the proposed savings in 2014/15 would not be achieved. This was due largely to the amount of training and reorganisation required to make the Contact Centre effective and the lack of a Customer Access Strategy and detailed action plan to identify how and when financial benefits would be realised.

With regard to the non-financial benefits set out in the Business Case for 2014/15 the Contact Centre had been implemented and the provision of a new customer services approach continued to progress. 

The Customer Contact Centre was handling telephone enquiries and general email enquiries for Streetscene & Environment, Planning & Building Control, Licensing, Housing Estates, Housing Re-registration, Environmental Health and Electoral Services.

A report would be made to the Finance & Resources Committee on 14 January 2015 identifying possible future developments and savings that could be delivered over the medium term. This would include a Customer Access Strategy which would identify channel shift and the types of channels which should be promoted.

A motion was MOVED by Cllr Clark and SECONDED by Cllr Barrett to receive the recommendations in the report.

RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY:

2.1         That Members note the report in relation to the progress of the Customer Contact Centre.

2.2       That the Head of Customer Services report to the Finance and   Resources Committee on the Customer Access Strategy includes analysis of different customer access channels, the      demographics of the Borough, and customer feedback.  

 Termination of Meeting

During the preceding item, in accordance with Rule 28 of Part 4.1. – Council Procedure Rules, the business of the meeting not having concluded by two hours after its start, Members voted to agree to continue with the meeting for a further 30 minutes.