Autumn 2009
When you get in touch with us
In order to understand how we can improve the service residents receive when they get in touch with us, we asked a number of questions on how and when the panel members would prefer to contact the Council.
49% said they would prefer to contact us by phone, 35% by website or email and 16% face-to-face. By far the most popular time to contact us is Monday to Friday between 9am and 5pm (55%) but a significant proportion (30%) also said that they would like to be able to contact the council after 5pm on weekdays. 7% would like contact to be available on Saturday mornings with less than 5% preferring other times – the graph below shows these preferences.
We then asked what annoys the panellists most about getting in touch with the Council and what one thing we could do to improve this experience. The responses we received to these questions were frank and candid, some examples were:
- Being on hold for a long time
- Being passed from one person to another
- Use / expense of 0845 number
- Press 1 for....press 2 for... etc
- More phone lines needed
- Return calls when asked
- Answer phones faster
- Better trained staff to answer queries.
All these responses will be analysed carefully and, where possible, improvement plans will be put in place to overcome the things that residents find annoying when trying to contact us. Panellists also provided us with an inspiring list of companies that they have received a really good service from. We shall be investigating these examples and taking ideas from them to help make your contact with the Council a more pleasant experience.
