The Global Association for Contact Center Best Practices & Networking

15 February 2011 -- In its latest report Socitm says that individual local authority departments have traditionally managed their own clients and many councils have no officer in overall charge of citizen contact.

The Better served: customer access, efficiency and channel shift report, published on 15 February, calls for councils to introduce comprehensive enquiry and service data collection across all services. This would enable the efficient management of all public enquiries, the identification of scope for improvement and tracking of progress.

Councils cannot start on an effective programme of 'channel shift' until data is collected and analysed, and few councils are currently able to produce comprehensive customer enquiry data, it says.

On costs, Socitm has found that the difference in spending on face-to-face contact alone is between £1.80 and £13 per head of population.

One unitary council surveyed by Socitm receives 445,488 face-to-face visits a year. If it reduced this volume by 50% it could save £1.6m a year on this aspect of contact handling alone.

The report says that active client management can reduce costs in three main ways. Firstly, more efficient handling of contacts, where a greater proportion are resolved quickly by introducing professional client service approaches and common standards.

Secondly, a reduction in avoidable contacts; and thirdly shifting enquiries from high cost channels, such as phone, mail and face-to-face, to a lower cost channel, usually the web.

The document warns, however, that if a member of the public cannot do what they set out to do on their council's website, they will lose confidence and revert to traditional channels. According to Socitm data, between 8% and 35% of web enquiries to council websites currently fail.

More positively, Socitm identifies councils that have adopted comprehensive approaches to contact management. Birmingham city council, for example, expects £197.4m of cashable benefits over 10 years from its customer first programme. Tameside council aims to save £1m over the next four years from better management of its front office.

Surrey county council has reduced the cost of phone and web contacts from 79p to 49p per enquiry since 2007, saved £175,000 in its contact centre and £150,000 elsewhere by reducing avoidable contact. In Wales, Rhondda Cynon Taf council started by improving its website before making moves to create channel shift.

Commenting on the report, Jos Creese, the president of Socitm, said: "What is recommended is not without risk, but the pace and depth of public sector cuts and reform requires a radical rethink about how we design and deliver services."

Posted by Veronica Silva Cusi, news correspondent
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk

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