Issue - meetings

To put questions to the Cabinet Member regarding areas of her Portfolio that are the responsibility of the main Scrutiny Committee:

Local welfare programmes:

• Revenue and benefits;
• Council Tax Reduction Scheme;
• Welfare advice;
• Haringey Here to Help;
• Ethical debt policy

Your Council:

• Call centre

The Panel undertook a question and answer session with Cllr Chandwani, the Cabinet Member for Tackling Inequality & Resident Services. The following arose during the discussion of this agenda item:

1. The Panel questioned waiting times and queried what strategic performance data was collected in regard to the call centre. In response, the Cabinet Member set out that the call centre was not the only place that dealt with people’s issues. The call centre was the front door for 15 key service areas but that the other 85 or so service areas were dealt with in a different way. It was noted that the time spent waiting on hold would therefore depend on what the issue or service involved was. The Committee was advised that call centre staff were trained to deal with 90% of the issues that would arise and that there would always be some complex multi-service issues that were perhaps not best responded to through a call centre setting. The Cabinet Member advised that the three service areas that received the greatest number of calls were housing repairs, council tax and parking.
2. The Panel also sought clarification about what the average time taken on a call was and whether comparative data was known about how well Haringey did in relation to call answering in comparison to neighbouring boroughs. The Cabinet Member set out that in order to make a meaningful comparison, it would be necessary to compare like for like and that, for example, most other authorities did not deal with housing enquiries directly through the ‘front door’ call centre. Officers advised that in relation to call answering times, the latest performance information up to 11^th November was that:

·         40% of calls were answered within 30 seconds

·         61% of calls were answered within 5 minutes

·         70% of calls were answered within 10 minutes

3. Officers commented that there was generally a single digit percentage of calls that hit an hour in terms of call waiting times. The call centre received around 8k calls a week and 70% of those were answered within 10 minutes. Officers advised that in general waiting times could vary significantly, particularly when dealing with complex multi-level issues that related to residents’ welfare. Staff were encouraged to engage with these difficult complex problems, as it was recognised that there were residents with a high level of need.
4. Officers advised that in relation to neighbouring boroughs, 92% of calls were answered and that this was broadly in line with other neighbouring local authorities.
5. The Committee sought clarification about whether, when people were on-hold, that they were waiting for a person with specialist knowledge to become free or whether calls were handled in a more generalised manner. In response, the Committee was advised that the customer service staff had a main specialist service area, along with two other smaller areas of knowledge. This meant that calls in relation to a particular service area were dealt with by specific staff and that there could be a high waiting time  ...  view the full minutes text for item 34