Callers to council forced to wait more than five minutes

Figures show that call centre target was changed in April last year from 70 per cent of calls answered within 30 seconds to 60 per cent of calls answered within 300 seconds (five minutes).

The target specifies that abandoned calls should be no greater than four per cent.

Figures show that many residents phoning the council were kept waiting for up to five minutes, and sometimes longer.

In September last year, a quarter of residents gave up waiting for an answer and abandoned their call to the council.

On the worst day – September 27, 2021 - just 47 per cent of the 499 calls made to the council were answered within five minutes.

A total of 40 per cent of callers on this day gave up and abandoned their call.

At last Thursday’s full council meeting, members unanimously agreed to a motion brought by Liberal Democrat councillors raising concerns about the target being changed without councillors’ knowledge.

It asked to review the process for revising targets for residents’ services without any scrutiny or input from members; and identify reasons why the revised targets for the call centre were regularly missed.

The motion highlighted that despite the lower standards, targets have still been regularly missed since April 2021.

Despite the new target, the customer charter on the borough council’s website still states that it aims to answer calls within a 30 second target.

Councillor Andrew Bowes, who proposed the motion, said: “The newer target of answering calls in 300 seconds is 10 times the length of the target as stated in the customer charter. Also, putting the length of time in seconds may make it sound like it’s not that long, but 300 seconds is five minutes which is quite a long time to be waiting for someone to answer a phone.”

She added: “We leave it long enough to boil an egg, make a cup of tea or coffee.”

The Liberal Democrat councillor for Brighton Hill said she believes the customer charter still displaying the old target is an “oversight” but added that it means people are “expecting their call to be answered in half a minute are hanging on the phone for up to five.

“Is it any wonder that many members of the public on social media and elsewhere are so critical of the services they receive especially when asked to pay more in council tax as they see what they perceive to be a decline in services.”

Cllr Ron Hussey said councillors agreed in the budget last year that there should be a review of the contact centre service targets and said: “The review was carried out by officers, the new standard was agreed by officers and officers agreed to implement it. I was not involved at any time, I was not consulted, I was not asked to approve it. It’s a frontline service. I believe that councillor should be setting the standard.”

He added: “The new standard says that we accept that our residents can have a service that 60 per cent of their telephone calls are answered within 300 seconds. By inference, it means that we accept that 40 per cent will be waiting longer than five minutes and I don’t think that’s acceptable.”

Cllr Hussey also pointed out that councillors are allowed to “queue jump” when calling the council and are given a freephone number which prioritises their calls.

Conservative councillor Rebecca Bean defended the new target explaining that it was set for various reasons, including because of a change in the way residents contact the council.

She claimed that abandonment rates are “not always driven by the time waiting” adding: “It could be that a resident has found their answer through an alternative channel.”

Cllr Bean accepted that, even with a new lower target, this was not always met, but said this was because of various reasons, including staff turnover, staff sickness absence, and the challenges of the pandemic.

“Contact from residents have often been complex which has a direct impact on call handling times and therefore the council’s ability to answer calls,” she said, adding that the council has now recruited and trained new contact centre staff.

Council leader Cllr Ken Rhatigan suggested it could be “quite dangerous” for councillors to set standards.

Labour councillor Cllr Andrew McCormick supported the motion and said: “It sends a message to our residents that we are not happy about declining service standards.

“There has been a trend when looking at certain things in the council to look at what others are doing, other local authorities, and where the standards are lower, match our standards lower accordingly. The public do not like that because they are not seeing a reduction in their council tax.”

Conservative councillor Mark Ruffell also supported the motion and said: “It’s important that we show accountability and transparency with performance and where it’s thought that standards have slipped even if it’s been remedied it’s very important that that is looked into in an open and transparent manner.

“It’s very easy when you’ve got a large majority to swat this off. It’s not the political issue of the year.”

He added: “If we don’t publicly check our performance standards will slip it’s inevitable.”

However, Cllr Gavin James pointed out that the problem was regarding the change of target.

He said: “The target changed and we shouldn’t lose sight of that. That happened and it didn’t happen after a debate, after we were presented with a report with all the options and benefits of those options. It just happened. Things shouldn’t just happen.”

Cllr John McKay, who seconded the motion, said: “Our residents deserve better and I’m sure we all want to give them better.”

All councillors voted to support the motion, which includes identifying the reasons for the revised targets being missed regularly and that the proposed increase in staffing of 3.54 full time equivalent staff is “sufficient to rectify the issue”.

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