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Dedicated staff go that extra mile

8:00am Tuesday 16th March 2010 in


SIR – In local government we are always very tempted to look at the negatives.

An excellent example of this is performance management reporting by the city council and the criticism the Worcestershire Hub shared service has received recently.

It is very easy to highlight the negative points as they make good catchy headlines and sound bites and then ignore the positives.

In last Thursday’s paper it was reported that it is unlikely the staff in this service will cope with the level of queries resulting from the newly issued council tax bills. The article stated that extra resources in anticipation of this have been found but it did not clarify that it meant extra staff had been already brought in and were being trained which will help maintain performance. It should be noted that there is a team of dedicated staff at the Hub who are hard working and are always willing go that extra mile. These are times of unprecedented financial difficulty with many people having to contact the Hub for the first time with complex issues that take time to be sorted.

I would like to praise these staff for the fact that, as you said, across the service 80 per cent of all callers were dealt with within the required performance time set.

Councillor Lucy Hodgson
Portfolio for citizen engagement and communications

Comments(8)

Brian Hunt says...
8:32am Tue 16 Mar 10

Well Lucy since you are the councilor responsible I have to say that "You would say that anyway".
I have also to support the great staff at the hub, WHEN you are able to get through, and so question the 80 per cent figure of contact within the required performance time set.
And as to the additional staff wasn't it the bright idea of those in charge to remove the staff from the Council tax counter in the first place, and replace them with the Dalek cash machines we have now?
Perhaps Lucy should have the unabridged reports from Mystery shoppers who could try the scheme at unrehearsed dates and times, this has been undertaken by pensioners groups in the past with eye opening success.
So yes the service is good when you can get through, but you cannot get put through to a particular department, meaning that the call centre operator has to be a huge fountain of knowledge and experience.
Sorry Lucy your cuts have backfired.

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Tulstar says...
9:03am Tue 16 Mar 10

I agree with you, Brian.
.
The service I have received from the Hub has been excellent. But only when I've got through. I'm not criticising the staff at all - there just aren't enough of them!
.
I would like to raise Lucy's point of "80 per cent of all callers were dealt with within the required performance time set"... This is actually quite a low percentage when you consider that a lot of other (adequately manned) call centres manage 95%+
.
The solution seems simple enough - GET MORE STAFF!

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Brian Hunt says...
9:21am Tue 16 Mar 10

Yes more staff, but also stop dumping more and more work on them.
You can dilute your efforts until you become inefficient, and that is what is happening.
Politicians what would we do without them ha ha.

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Tulstar says...
9:57am Tue 16 Mar 10

Give all of the call centre staff a week off and stick the same amount of budget managers and negative councillors on the end of the phones instead. I bet some money for staff would miraculously appear afterwards!

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Common Sense says...
9:58am Tue 16 Mar 10

What's this? Cries for even MORE staff?
.
I quite thought the Council had instructions to SAVE money?
.
Super letter from Cllr Hodgson - I had to read it three times to fully understand it....written in true "council speak"! Brilliant - where do they go to learn this special language?
Perhaps it's the same place that the announcers in supermarkets go, to learn to speak in "sing-song"?

CS.

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Tulstar says...
10:43am Tue 16 Mar 10

Common Sense wrote:
What's this? Cries for even MORE staff?
.
I quite thought the Council had instructions to SAVE money?
.
Super letter from Cllr Hodgson - I had to read it three times to fully understand it....written in true "council speak"! Brilliant - where do they go to learn this special language?
Perhaps it's the same place that the announcers in supermarkets go, to learn to speak in "sing-song"?

CS.
I know - silly of me to think that they'd spend money where they needed to!!
.
They'll probably just cut the staffing levels again and spend the money they save on a 5 foot long cycle lane somewhere...

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jovialcommonsense says...
12:02am Wed 17 Mar 10

"They'll probably just cut the staffing levels again and spend the money they save on a 5 foot long cycle lane somewhere..."

Haven't you heard.....they need to cut costs so in future no cycle lane will exceed 3 feet.....:)

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clerken says...
9:55pm Wed 17 Mar 10

Perhaps I'm being naive, but what was up with the old-fashioned system where you got through to the person you WANTED TO SPEAK TO?

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