Northampton Borough Council, the largest district council in England, has opened a new Customer Contact Centre in order to improve telephone customer service performance. The Centre is tasked with ensuring citizens get connected with Customer Service Advisors as rapidly as possible, resolving more queries within a single call and improving the overall ‘customer experience’.

Call handling technology from Macfarlane Telesystems is at the heart of Northampton’s new operation. Macfarlane CallPlus technology intelligently routes all incoming calls to appropriate Advisors, records calls, and provides both automated call handling (IVR) and detailed management reporting facilities. Planned developments include the implementation of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software from Lagan

The Customer Contact Centre was opened in June 2006. Council services provided through the Centre include: Housing Repairs, Housing Customer Services, Cleansing (waste, graffiti etc.), Complaints, ‘Councillor Contact Centre’ and switchboard answering. In Development Phase 2, due to be completed December 2006, Building Control Planning, Environmental Health, Call Care (24 hour Call Out service to Sheltered Housing residents) services will be added. In Phase 3, planned for completion March 2007, services will be extended even further and are likely to include: Sheltered Housing, Housing and Money Advice, Homelessness and Housing Needs, Tenancy Support, and Rental Income. The Centre currently employs 26 personnel, a number which is expected to rise to 40 when Phase 2 is completed – and grow further in Phase 3.

Northampton Borough Council’s Contact Centre currently handles up to 5500 customer calls per week.
A Positive Response to a Poor CPA Rating

Northampton Borough Council’s decision to implement a Contact Centre followed Customer research in 2005 and a CPA inspection in March 2004 where the Council was rated as ‘Poor’. It responded rapidly and positively, putting in place a recovery plan with a number of priority areas. One of these was customer services - with a particular focus on improving customer access, both face-to-face and over-the-phone.

Customer service performance across the Council was patchy, with different areas delivering markedly different levels of service. In some areas, up to 20% of citizens calls were being abandoned with many Council Officers using answer machines and voice mail rather than taking calls.

A specialist customer service consultancy was hired to assist the Council in setting up a new contact centre. A technology tender resulted in Macfarlane and Lagan technology being selected - and the process of moving specialised Council personnel into the Contact Centre was started in March 2006 in preparation for the June opening. All Contact Centre personnel will receive ‘cross training’, enabling them to gain knowledge of other areas within the Council and so be better placed to handle a range of customer queries. The Council hopes to have all its contact centre personnel fully multi-skilled (so that citizens can ring a single Contact Centre number and have any query answered) by the end of 2007.

The Customer Contact Centre has already proven to be a success. Call volumes are up (indicating that customers are confident that their calls will now be better handled) and the centre is consistently hitting its target of keeping the percentage of abandoned calls below 5% of total. The Centre also has a ‘Grade of Service’ target that is based on ‘time to answer’, ‘call duration’ and ‘abandoned call’ performance – and after only 3 months, the new Contact Centre is hitting its Grade of Service target for 80% of all incoming calls.

Macfarlane’s technology has played a significant part in this success according to Jean Eastbrook, Contact Centre Team Leader at Northampton Borough Council. “The Macfarlane technology has impressed us” she comments. “It has achieved everything we wanted and provided extra flexibility in key areas. For example, with the recent adverse weather conditions (i.e. flooding) generating a high volume of calls, we’ve been able to play automated messages to callers alerting them of what services are available (e.g. the availability of sandbags) without their needing to speak to our Advisors. Many people within the Council initially had doubts about setting up a contact centre. Now, I would say that most people have embraced it and the feedback we’ve received is very positive.”