42 Customer Service Centre Function PDF 61 KB
A report by the Director of Communities setting out the procurement decision in relation to a Customer Service Centre function.
The committee is asked to review the report to ensure: -
Additional documents:
Minutes:
42.1 The Committee scrutinised a report by the Assistant Director (Communities), copy appended to the signed minutes.
42.2 Summary of Members’ comments and questions: -
· Around 34 Customer Service Centre staff are expected to transfer to the new provider to ensure efficiency of operation. An external provider will have the necessary technical expertise to implement the requirements of the function. The cost of bringing this back in house would have been considerably more than the estimated cost of £10.2m of the out-sourced contract
· Council and non-Council staff already work together in some areas, so no problems are envisaged in terms of in-house and out-sourced provision
· The key is to find an organisation that reflects the values of the County Council which may mean that staff could be located anywhere in the UK. The Covid pandemic has changed the way we work in terms of flexibility so there may be a balance between home and office based working practices.
· The proposed contract term is only for three years as lessons have been learnt from long contract arrangements in the past. With technology-based services and contracts it is important to be able to adapt and change quickly to keep up-to-date which is harder with long contracts
· To bring about the necessary culture change there have been workshops across services talking about what needed to be done differently with digital services and how to make it easy for customers to use. This dialogue will mean staff understand and are better able to address the culture change requirements.
· There have also been corporate-wide communications, mainly with those impacted which will continue
· Customers will still be able to make contact by phone
· Staff will be trained to recognise vulnerable customers, deal with a wide range of queries and know who to pass calls to when appropriate
· Current key performance indicators (KPIs) covered the whole service so didn’t highlight the differences in performance between areas – the new KPIs would, as well as showing whether the customer got a satisfactory outcome of their call
· Artificial Intelligence and voice recognition would be used as much as possible
42.3 Resolved – that the Committee: -
i. Supports a partner organisation/function based within West Sussex
ii. Recommends a visit to a new provider when possible
iii. Recognises the importance of the organisational culture and stresses the importance of two-way communication and feedback plus training
iv. Stresses the importance of how the Council interacts with vulnerable customers to ensure they receive the support needed
v. Stresses the need to consider how the links are made between the in-house and out-sourced service
vi. Recognises the importance of staff training to ensure wider service needs can be recognised and supported when required
vii. Supports the inclusion of monitoring and satisfaction targets within the contract
viii. Welcomes the work underway to use future technologies