Newcastle Contact Centre Survey 2013
Executive Summary
This report presents the findings from the December 2013 survey of people who used Newcastle City Council’s Contact Centre. This research updates the findings from a previous survey in 2012, carried out by the council’s Total Research team. This research was carried out by the Policy and Communications Team, with fieldwork (telephone interviewing) being done by Bluegrass Research[1]. The author of this report is
Louise Reeve, Policy and Information Officer, who can be contacted at: , or by telephone at: 0191 277 7508 (internal ext. 27508).
Calling the contact centre
· Three-quarters of people were satisfied with the ease of finding the telephone number to call the contact centre.
· Over half waited no more than three minutes for their call to be answered, and a similar percentage were satisfied with the length of time they waited.
· However, there has been a decrease in people replying “I didn’t have to wait”, and an increase in people replying “I waited over five minutes”.
· Satisfaction declines with the length of time someone has to wait, and the majority of people think that they should not have to wait for more than three minutes to have their call answered, although more people think it is reasonable to wait for longer (three minutes and over) than in previous years.
· Just less than half of respondents were satisfied with the usefulness of recorded information they listened to whilst waiting for their call to be answered.
· People who were most satisfied with the usefulness of recorded information were those calling in relation to parking (59%) and repairs (56%), and those who were least satisfied were calling in relation to payments (36%) and council tax (33%).
Satisfaction with aspects of the call
· People were most satisfied with being treated fairly by staff, and least satisfied with how their enquiry was resolved. Overall satisfaction was 72%.
· Satisfaction with nearly all aspects of the call has decreased over the past three years, with the exception of whether people feel treated fairly and with respect (this is part of the Customer Service Charter: “We will treat you fairly and with respect”).
· Half of all respondents had contacted Newcastle City Council once about their enquiry and one-fifth had contacted the council four times.
Accessing Council services
· Over three-quarters of respondents preferred to access Council services over the phone.
· Most people have mobile phones, and the majority of them (just over half of everyone in the survey) had smartphones. The majority preferred not to receive text or email alerts related to Council services they have expressed an interest in.
· Less than half of people in the survey said they were very or fairly likely to access online City Council services in the near future, although the percentage of people who say this is increasing year on year.
· Of those who did say they were likely to do this, the majority thought they would be likely to do so via the website.
· The majority of respondents said they would not like to receive Council services via the internet, but the percentage of people who said they would like to receive services this way is increasing year on year.
Conclusion: Changes over time
· The results of the survey show that whilst many people are satisfied with the contact centre, satisfaction has declined in several areas compared to previous years, particularly in relation to call waiting times, the quality of recorded information, and the number of times people have to contact the council about their enquiry.
· 60% of people in the survey said that they waited no more than 3 minutes for their call to be answered, so we appear to be meeting most people’s expectations, since the majority (58%) think that they should not have to wait more than 3 minutes to have their call answered. Overall satisfaction decreases with longer waiting times.
· The percentage of people who find it useful to know their place in the queue has declined over the past three years, from 90% in 2010 to 77% in 2013. It is not immediately clear why this is.
· The majority of people were satisfied with the number of times they had to contact the Council to resolve their enquiry. This indicates that for most people, we are meeting one of the main elements of the Customer Service Charter: “We will try to get things right first time”. However, satisfaction with the number of times people need to contact the Council to resolve their enquiries has decreased over the past three years, from 80% in 2010 to 68% in 2013.
· The percentage of people who said they would like to receive Council services via the internet has increased from 7% in 2010 to 22% in 2013. The percentage of people with a mobile phone is increasing.
· In 2013 we asked about smartphone ownership for the first time, and found that 62% of people with a mobile phone have a smartphone.
Comments included:
“The woman I spoke to was very polite and friendly, and I like it when she answers the phone, as she tells you her name.”
“I don’t mind holding in a queue, but the actual waiting time to get through to one specific service is just horrendous."
“I think it's very good and they help you as much as possible, if I need another department they transfer me straight away and I never have to wait.”
“I'm ringing through for an 80-year-old person. For an older person it's too complicated. They need to speak to someone who understands them, and for there to be less choice.”
Background and Methodology
About the Contact Centre
The Contact Centre employs a combination of approximately 63 full and part-time staff and handles around 16,297 calls per week, from both internal (staff) and external callers, dealing with enquiries regarding Council Tax, Payments, Environmental Issues, Repairs Centre, Parking, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support, Electoral Services, Jobshop, Complaints and Registrar’s. At the time of the survey, call volumes were increased due to the impact of the government’s Welfare Reforms. The scope of this research covers people who called regarding Council Tax, Envirocall, parking, payments and repairs.
Aims and objectives of the research
The aim of this research was to provide a comprehensive and up to date report on service users’ opinions of Newcastle City Council’s Contact Centre. Objectives were to:
· Contact a statistically valid sample of callers to the Contact Centre.
· Measure user experiences and perceptions of the Contact Centre.
· Explore people’s views around how they prefer to contact the council and access council services, to help support the council’s priorities of promoting digital inclusion, and encouraging “channel shift”, where, wherever possible, people’s preferred channel for contacting the council shifts from telephone or face-to-face contact to accessing services online.
Research methodology
To gather data on people’s views, we commissioned Bluegrass Research to carry out a short telephone survey of a sample of recent internal and external users of the Contact Centre. The questionnaire used can be found in Appendix 1 on p.41. 401 users were surveyed over three weeks in December 2013.
We aimed to replicate the number of calls made in the last survey (carried out in December 2011) for each type of query, which were: repairs centre = 142 calls, Council Tax = 127 calls, Envirocall = 111 calls, parking = 19 calls, and payments = 14 calls.
These figures were originally calculated based upon the length of time staff spent handling these lines of enquiry (not purely on the number of calls handled). The higher the proportion of time spent dealing with lines of enquiry, the higher the proportion of call-backs to those customers. We are grateful to all research participants for taking the time to give us their views. Percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole figure, so in some cases they may not total exactly 100%.
About the people in the survey
Most people in the survey were female, heterosexual, White British, and did not have a long-term health condition which affects their daily activities. Most people gave their religion or belief as Christian. These characteristics have remained constant across the years, although in previous years the percentage of people who had a disability was higher: 36% in February 2011, compared to 26% in 2013. The single largest percentage of respondents (27%) were aged 50-64. Nearly a quarter came from one of four wards: Denton, Fenham, Walker and Woolsington, and 8% came from outside the Newcastle area.
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[1] Bluegrass Research: http://www.bluegrassresearch.co.uk/