Minutes: June 2006
Wednesday 14th June 2006
1. Present
Helen, James, Doug, Sharon, Rosanna, Kati, Kathleen.
1. Apologies
Chris, Ken, Robin, Paul.
3. Presentation by Rosanna Browning, Director of Communications – on Aspire
Rosanna circulated copies of her presentation. She said she was going to talk about the Council’s vision for Customer Services, what a ‘One Stop Shop and Contact Centre’ were, how they were going to deliver their Promises and the next step.
She said that anyone wishing to contact the Council had over 200 telephone numbers to choose from and there were five different locations across the town centre if people wanted to visit us. Was this the right way of interacting with our customers? We needed to change and put the customer first and make it easy to work with them. We needed to make Customer Services very accessible whether for an enquiry, request or complaint.
Rosanna said a very fundamental change was that they wanted Customer Services to own the relationship with the customer from the time they first contacted them until they were fully satisfied with the outcome.
A One Stop Shop was a physical location where members of the public could visit face to face. A Contact Centre was basically for phone calls but also emails, letters and any other form of contact.
The promises Customer Services will be delivering were Nos. 1 and 2 that were about delivering a One Stop Shop and Contact Centre, No. 8 about responding to complaints within 10 working days and No. 9 that was about making the website more available. Not all groups wanted to use the website but many do and they wanted to make sure it was as accessible as possible and had as much information as possible. There was also another promise and, although it was not directly Customer Services, Promise No 6 was about being the best Council in the country as far as Equalities were concerned. Unless staff dealing with customers were living and breathing equalities we would not deliver Promise 6.
How were we going to deliver the vision and promises? By setting up a centralised multi-purpose One Stop Shop where the public could come in and have 80% of queries answered at that first contact. We would provide staff with the right technology and information to do this. All processes that go into the One Stop Shop would need to be reviewed and we recognise that not all queries will fall into those processes, there will be some that don’t. If we were expecting staff to answer queries on a variety of subjects it would be necessary for them to be properly trained. We also needed to provide well- trained staff with really good systems. We also wanted to have a culture of continuous improvement.
We would have a wealth of information and know the hot spots across the Borough. We would know where problems areas were so on a monthly basis we would look at that information to identify where we needed to focus our attention. We also needed to look at complaints on a monthly basis. Complaints could be positive as they give us an opportunity to fix problems.
As far as the Contact Centre was concerned one of the things we were in the process of deciding was whether we should have one telephone number or multiple numbers? Was it better to channel people to someone who could answer their questions or give one number that was easy to remember?
Questionnaire had gone out to the public and Rosanna said she also needed the Coalitions’ feedback. In the questionnaire people were asked questions about telephone numbers and opening hours. Closing date for the questionnaires was Friday 16 June.
James said it was important that you would only have to deal with one person when you rang in.
Sharon asked if calls to the call centre would be charged at local rate? Rosanna said it would probably be local rate, they were looking at having a 01793 number but you did get more resilience with 0845 numbers. Sharon said it was important that people knew what they were paying for calls.
Rosanna advised that the One Stop Shop and Contact Centre would be delivered through a Strategic Partner and the contract was due to be signed in October and both would be up and running within six months. Some of the high volume services would go across early and the more delicate services during the latter part of the year.
Helen asked if there would be extra Council funding or Government funding? Rosanna said there would not be extra Government funding and as far as Council funding was concerned they were going through the processes now and didn’t think it would cost any more. She said at the moment she had staff on various sites but if they were all sitting together she would not need all the staff she had. By bringing people together you got better synergies and it brought advantages to staff as well. She said they were also looking at ways to improve their processes and services and they could do that within the same budget.
Helen asked who would be doing the equalities training? Rosanna said it would be the Partner but whether they would outsource or do it themselves she did not know. Helen said she was just concerned about the training of front line staff for Coalitions? Rosanna said it was too soon to know whether Alan Daley would be involved but that was why she had wanted to hear the Coalition’s views.
Helen said the website needed sorting out as it was a jumble. Rosanna said they had updated the front page and there was work taking place so she was concerned if Helen was having difficulty finding what she wanted. Doug said he had tried West Berkshire’s website and couldn’t find what he wanted so he went through the Swindon website instead. Rosanna said one thing that was crucial was getting the website up to date. Helen said politically after the elections Rosanna’s team were on the ball.
Helen thanked Rosanna for her presentation.
5. Minutes of the last meeting and Matters Arising
Agreed as a true record.
6. EAF Meeting feedback and Issues to be raised at EAF Interim Meeting.
Helen said she had attended the Swindon Strategic Partnership meeting on behalf of the Forum.
7. Report of the Hate Crime Forum – Robin Stannard
As Robin was unable to attend his report was circulated, copy attached.
8. Any Other Business
Letter from Jennifer Sewell who sent the questionnaires last autumn to aid the research project ‘Comparing Domestic Violence in same Sex and Heterosexual Relationships’. She advised that the project results would be printed next spring and asked if the Coalition would like to be kept informed?
It was agreed that they would like to be kept informed and Kati will advise them of this.
Information from Adrian Robinson about 2007 – European Year of Equal opportunities for all.
News update from New Swindon Company.
Information that SBC have awarded their domiciliary care contracts to four main providers in the Borough.
Kati said she reported back last time that the Audit Commission had selected the LGBT as a stakeholder. Pride Youth fed back their information which was very different from the rest of the Coalition and the outcome was that Pride Youth were registered as a separate stakeholder.
Membership - Doug asked if we could put a piece in Sue Mowat’s newsletter saying the LGBT was a good forum for staff members to attend, but don’t mention Coalition.
Kati will prepare a sample flyer for distribution at the Mailcoach. She will bring to the next meeting for comment.
9. Dates of future meetings
7-9pm, Wednesday 9 August: CR2, Civic Offices
7-9pm, Wednesday 11 October: CR2, Civic Offices
7-9pm, Wednesday 13 December: CR2, Civic Offices
