The City of Port Adelaide Enfield has developed a highly successful call centre that delivers quality customer outcomes. The call centre was set up on a trial basis in August 1997 and commenced operations on a proper footing on 1 January 1998. It operates from 8.00 am to 5.15 pm daily.
Call centres provide a queuing system, which ensures the first available operator answers each call.
On a rotational basis 16 specially trained staff operate the call centre and Council’s customer service centre. They work closely with other departments to ensure they can deal with most matters at this first point of contact
System reports show that 83 percent of calls are cleared at this first point of contact.
Calls where a staff member is asked for by name have been taken out of the calculations. If these were included the clearance rate would be over 90 percent.
On average, telephones are answered within 19 seconds at the Port Adelaide Enfield call centre. This is better than the accepted Australian best practice standard of 20 seconds.
With calls abandoned, the call centre has achieved a rate of 2.93 percent, again ahead of accepted best practice of three percent.
The reporting system is sophisticated. All calls are tracked, giving full details of matters and how and when they are resolved.
Quality control measures have been put in place and verified by three external customer satisfaction surveys.
These have included a benchmark survey against other Councils, focus groups and mystery shopping.
For further information contact Faye Spence, Coordinator Customer Service, telephone (08) 8405 6600.
