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We have recently merged our service centres and we wanted to keep you updated. The following report was presented to our Customer Consultative Panel on Monday 23 July 2007... |
Introduction
Until June 2007 GGH operated two 0800 Service Centres:
v Golden Gates Direct (Housing Management)
v Golden Gates Direct – Property Services (formerly Property Connect).
In early June 2007 following a full review of GGDirect, the 2 service centres were brought together into the Town Hall's East Annexe under a new merged management structure.
This merged team is now responsible for all enquiries on housing management, repairs, improvements and decent homes work.
New GGDirect
As well as dealing with initial contact from customers, GGDirect deals with a significant list of 'back office' processing functions. This includes:
v CHOOSEaHOME
v Medical & social priority assessments
v Tenants contents insurance
v Door entry systems
v Garage lettings
v Aids & adaptations
One of a number of aims of the new GGDirect was the switch of a range of other back office tasks and employees into GGDirect. From June 2007 the following functions moved to GGDirect:
v Right to Buy applications
v Rent Accounting
v Shared Ownership
v Former Tenant Arrears
v Insurance claims (fire & flood)
Having a team responsible for a large range of functions gives GGDirect more flexibility for managing work priorities. Customer Service Advisors (CSA's) are multi skilled to deal with a wider range of work. This should result in work being processed quicker and greater consistency on delivering our service standards.
The main change to GGDirect is to the team of CSA's. GGDirect is split into 3 teams:
v CSA's based at our 4 offices
v CSA's taking out 0800 calls
v CSA's dealing with back office work
CSA's have the same responsibilties regardless of which team they are currently based in. This approach allows maximum flexibiility across the 3 teams. Our move to a dedicated team of CSA's dealing with our 0800 calls means we are more able to monitor and manage call performance and ensure consistent quality in how we handle the calls.
As with any new team, GGDirect will take time to fully bed in. As part of the new GGD staffing structure we have introduced a new post of Performance Officer. This postholder's primary responsibilty is to monitor our performance on incoming 0800 calls and also sample calls to ensure that customers are dealt with appropriately. They will also be looking at other areas of performance across GGD such as measuring our performance against our service standards.
We have also established a post of Customer Excellence Manager who will be responsible for:
v Increasing levels of customer satisfaction
v Making a return on our investment in technology
v Encouraging a switch lower cost access channels e.g. 24/7 automated services
v Exploiting economies of scale to benefit the business, customers and employees
v A clearer focus on performance and productivity gains
v Identifying areas where workflow would benefit the processing of customer requests
v Developing outbound telephone exercises such as satisfaction surveying
v Increasing out ‘Right First Time’ approach
A copy of the new GGD staffing structure is attached as Appendix A.
Summary
In the February 2007 Housing Inspection 3 star report, access and customer care was found to be an area of strength. Singled out for comments were:
v A range of methods of accessing GGH services
v Well developed and customer led approach to access to services
v IT is used to support customers effectively in accessing services and information.
One of the areas of improvement the Inspectorate identified was in call performance. Although they acknowledged that this had improved, the new GGD structure from June 2007 means that we are more able to focus on maintaining call performance and also deliver other service standards.
The new GGD aims to build on our successes on access and customer care by further improving customer services. GGH also deliver efficiency savings through a reduction in expenditure and achieving more through existing budgets. The new structure and emphasis on IT will help to achieve this.