#contactcenterworld

Glenrothes, Scotland, Sept, 2021 - Members of the public facing "long waiting times" to get through to Fife Council's contact centre have been promised it will get better.

Fed-up West Fifers have told of their frustration after hanging on the line for 40 minutes without an answer as the service struggles to cope with rising demand and an increasing volume of calls.

Diarmuid Cotter, head of customer and online services, told councillors last week: "Things are improving.

"We've got some temporary staff, eight started on Monday, the figures have improved as of last week and I expect them to get better."

And he also confirmed that members of the public would no longer have to create an online account to report faults like potholes and missed bin collections.

Mr Cotter's report to the community and housing services sub-committee said there were 483,170 calls to the contact centre in 2020-21, fewer than previous years due to COVID closures, and 88.4 per cent were answered, with 57.5 per cent answered within the target time of 20 seconds.

That's an improvement from 2019-20, although performance dipped markedly this summer with customers facing long delays and backlogs on housing access and repairs, environmental issues, blue badges, transport, passes and concessions and the Scottish Welfare Fund.

He told councillors: "If you had asked me about the contact centre at the start of April, I would have said everything had gone fine, it had been a very good year, primarily because not all services were fully tooled up, for instance housing repairs, and we had a load of help from the customer service centres with an additional cohort of staff coming in to help.

"As we've come out of lockdown, and customer service staff have had to do their own work as well, it has become a problem."

In the past few months, there have been "long waiting times" with services re-opening and an increased workload.

In addition to answering phones and emails and dealing with everything from council tax and rent collection to 156,000 community alarm calls, Freedom of Information requests and complaints, the 400 staff phone people in relation to test and protect, process free school meal and pandemic support payments, and deal with business, crisis and self-isolation support grants.

#contactcenterworld

Posted by Veronica Silva Cusi, news correspondent
Source: https://www.dunfermlinepress.com

Date Posted: Monday, September 13, 2021