Contact Centre Performance

1. The following charts show that call answering performance has improved significantly since August and conversely call waiting times have reduced.

a. Chart 1 shows the improvement in the percentage of calls answered within 5 minutes except Revenues & Benefits

b. Chart 2 shows the same data for the Revenues & Benefits Service

Chart 1

Chart 2

c. Chart 3 shows the average call waiting time for all contact centre services including Revenues & Benefits.

Chart 3

2. The following table details the improvements implemented or planned to improve contact centre performance.

Action	Rationale / Benefits	Expected Timeframe
Email request managed through Liberty Converse	Emails are managed like phone calls whenever a customer service team member is available instead of removing people from the phones to deal with emails in batches. Faster response, more productivity and less management needed	Completed.
Additional Support from Rev/Bens on busiest days (Mon/Tues)	Rev/Bens calls peak at the start of the week. Resource from the back office to support the Contact Centre has significantly improved call answer time. The concept of managing work in Liberty Converse and Create (see above) will allow ‘payback’ of this extra support by the end of the year. Improving productivity, call answer time and reducing backlogs with no net cost to the Authority.	Completed.
Reduction in ‘other’ admin tasks for team	Focus on ensuring purpose is clear and team are insulated from any extraneous activities that don’t deliver against their purpose.	Completed.
Increased training and support from the organisation	Additional training allows easier management of variation. Customer contact tends to clump so more multi-skilled staff mean peaks can be absorbed without significantly affecting wait times.	Ongoing.
Review of ‘Wrap’ times and additional ‘Extended Wrap’ categories	Wrap time usage was showing characteristics of being used as an entitlement rather than a facility when needed. Wrap time was reduced to cover 70-80% of ‘normal’ usage, with extended wrap categories added to monitor usage. Total team wrap time has reduced from 19 hours/day to around 10 hrs/day (releasing around 1.25 FTEs of capacity). Extended wrap is better categorised for analysis and has marginally reduced since the change. Wrap times will be kept under review as training and demand changes.	Completed.
Moving email requests to Webforms	Webforms reduce indexing and basic admin and ensure that all necessary information is provided at the start of a transaction. Automation can be applied. Information is consistent and prevents additional contact and failure demand. Type of transaction and effort required is known straight away to aid management of demand. Email information is unstructured and effort required is unknown unless triaged.	Completed. RevBens processes live by end of March (awaiting integration work)
Contact centre wait times and busy times put online	Drive customers to other contact routes and smooth demand to quieter times	Completed.
Reallocation of call queues	The Contact centre are managed as two separate teams. One team has spare capacity (needed to deliver reasonable wait times), one team has virtually none (the bottleneck). Reallocating work (Devon Home Choice) from one team to another will free up over 0.4 FTE from the bottleneck to be absorbed in the spare capacity of the other team. This will improve call answer times for Devon Home Choice calls as well.	Completed.
Directed, focused support, where necessary	Booking appointments online. Locality Officers providing home visits when needed. Call-backs for complex cases to prevent multiple contacts.	Live by end of November.
Moving phone calls to webchats	Ability to manage more than one conversation and conversations being less time critical eases management of demand. Facebook Messenger functionality enabled	End of November for functionality to be implemented
Moving face to face to online or phone	The vast majority of face-to-face contact can be delivered as well or better online or over the phone with less cost and simpler management. Face to face contact in a fixed location only supports those local to that location and absorbs support from customers in other geographical locations.	Review of current reception offer in November. Toughened ‘video’ devices being investigated for both sites.
Phone messages changed to improve call speed	Data quality improvements and standard call structure should improve call speeds by ensuring customers have necessary information to hand during call wait time	December
Social media direct messages managed through Liberty Converse	Same as above. More productivity from Contact Centre. Will enable one role to be absorbed back into the Contact Centre to support the phone lines	December
Moving more processes online	Around 80% of our highest volume processes are available 24/7 online but this varies per service area. Focus on moving the lower volume transactions across so virtually all Council transactions can be completed online. Automation applied where possible.	Ongoing
More dynamic allocation of resources to support customer contact	Service areas supporting peaks in customer demand to prevent duplication and failure demand in the Back Office. Customer service is everyone’s responsibility, and good customer service is in everyone’s best interest as it saves time down the line.	Proof of concept trialled. Phased approach as areas of work move in to Liberty Create. Beginning Q4 2022/23
Netcall infrastructure improvements – Automated switchboard, customer surveys, workforce management, screen recording	Automated switchboard releases around 0.7FTE to answer calls and delivers a shorter call/wait time to most customers. Fewer messages/options needed. Surveys and screen recording improve quality and training over time. Workforce management enables further development and support of other services.	Funded. Awaiting installation date. Go live during Q4 2022/23