Adelaide City Council (ACC) recently won the Local Government Association of South Australia’s 2005 Service Quality Leadership Award – Best Customer Service Team. The Customer Service Centre has been recognised for its high quality and efficient customer service by the Service Quality Network for Local Government and the Benchmarking Australia Quality Assurance Program.
Adelaide City Council CEO, Mal Hammerling, said that staff have been recognised for their commitment to deliver quality customer service.
“The ACC provides excellent customer service to anyone contacting the Council,” the CEO said. “This national recognition proves we are achieving this aim. “The ACC Customer Service staff continually look for ways to achieve greater service productivity.”
Team Leaders, Katherine Hann and Debbie Shuttleworth, head up Council’s multi skilled Customer Service Team which handles between 750 and900 phone calls per day, in addition to numerous front counter inquiries.
Customer Service Officers (19 EFT) operate the very busy call centre, rotating between face to face front counter service and handling telephone contacts.
“This ensures staff have a full range of skills in meeting our customer needs,” Katherine Hann said. “We are committed to ongoing training, but the most important reason for our success is a culture of ensuring that we have fun, that we rely on each other and work as a team.”
Adelaide’s Customer Service staff use an innovative Call Centre Management System, TeleVantage, which assists them to improve quality customer service through call coaching, effectively managing Call Centre queues and improving statistical performance reporting.
“Its windows based, Excel reporting system is particularly useful for identifying any training requirements,” Katherine Hann said. “With a flick of a button we can switch to call coaching, silent monitoring and conference call situations.”
The system also enables calls to be recorded for training purposes which is beneficial in equipping staff to handle the occasional difficult caller.
TeleVantage, developed by CPS Technology Group, provides a range of accurate and current reports enabling staff to measure their performance, increase productivity, improve service levels and enhance customer relations.
Adelaide’s Customer Service Team is now in the running for the Australian Teleservices Association Award to be announced in February 2006.
