Western Downs Regional Council in Queensland recently celebrated the first anniversary of its highly successful Customer Contact Centre. Designed to streamline customer service and provide a faster response to customer enquiries, the Centre has more than met its target. In its first year the staff have dealt with 66,000 calls, answering an average of 5500 calls each month.
Another important part of Council’s Customer Service Strategy was the introduction of a single toll free number for all Council enquiries.
The Customer Contact Centre, coordinated from Dalby, is supported by a regional contact centre team, with officers based in Dalby, Chinchilla, Tara and Miles. Corporate Services General Manager Lee Vohland says, “We have a highly trained, professional, enthusiastic and friendly team. They have a broad knowledge of Council services and can deal with enquiries on all services including rates, water, animals, wheelie bins and roads.”
Council has also introduced a single 1300 number as the first point of contact for all enquiries. Mr Vohland notes that the number’s introduction “Is an integral part of the improvements we have made to Council’s customer service for the benefit of our residents across the region. Now residents only need to know one number.
“Since April last year the Contact Centre has improved Council’s response to customers with 61% of calls handled by the customer contact officers on the first call. The average waiting time for callers is about one minute, which shows how successful the Contact Centre has been in only a relatively short time.
“On average, 67 percent of all calls are being answered by the team in twenty seconds or less. The team is working hard toward achieving our targeted benchmark response of 80 percent, which we aim to reach in the coming year.”
Since the Centre’s inception, the customer service team has introduced an Emergency After Hours Service, enabling Council to respond to genuine emergencies, such as a burst water main, outside of normal business hours.
“Many residents rely on Council for key services, so we have a duty to make the customer response system as efficient, easy to use and accessible as possible, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” says Mr Vohland. “The Contact Centre and its administrative systems have taken Western Downs Regional Council’s customer service experience to the next level.”
