1 Accessing the Department's contact
centres
1. The Department for Work and Pensions has introduced
contact centres as the main channel of communication for many
of its customers who wish to make or renew an application for
benefit, seek advice, claim a pension, or look for a job. Contact
centres are common in the private sector although there are some
differences in the way they work. Private sector centres tend
to use a wider mixture of methods of communication including telephone
calls, e-mails, website forms, letters or faxes.[2]
Currently, the Department's contact centres mainly use the telephone
for most of their dealings with customers - 33 million outgoing
calls in 2004-05, compared with 300,000 emails and 300,000 faxes.
Private centres also tend to have more freedom in the mix of staff
they employ, but the Committee was told that the public sector
benefited from greater staff commitment and loyalty to customer
service.[3]
2. We examined the performance of the 62 contact
centres operated by three of the Department's agencies - The Pension
Service, Jobcentre Plus and the Disability and Carers Service
(Figure 1). Between them these services cost an estimated
£190 million.[4]
Figure
1: Details of the contact centres covered in this Report
Executive Agency
| Principal Services
| Number of centres
| Call answering (2004-05)
|
Jobcentre Plus
| First Contact Officer (for claiming benefit); Jobseeker Direct
| 26
| 9.6 million calls answered (76%)
|
| Employer Direct
| 9
| 1.7 million calls answered (97%)
|
The Pension Service
| Pensions Direct; State Pension Teleclaims; Pension Credit Application Line; Retirement Pension Forecasting
| 25
| 16.6 million calls answered (90%)
|
Disability and Carers Service
| Benefit Enquiry Line; Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance Helpline
| 2
| 5.5 million calls answered (21%)
|
Source: C&AG's Report
3. The Department's network of contact centres has
been rolling out over a number of years. Between 2001 and 2004,
there was a period of rapid growth, leading to a peak of 81 centres.
There has since been some rationalisation which will continue.
The Pension Service established 29 contact centres rapidly to
deal with the introduction of Pension Credit, but is now reducing
towards an end position expected to be 12 centres by 2010.[5]
4. Contact centres are a key part of the Department's
overall programme of modernising welfare delivery and also securing
the efficiency savings expected under the Gershon Review. The
Department sees contact centres as one way of offering their customers
choice in how they deal with them. It also considers that contact
centres can offer a more convenient service, for example, for
gaining an assessment of state pension entitlement quickly or
for applying for Pension Credit and Housing Benefit in one call.[6]
5. As the centres have been established, customers
have been encouraged to contact the Department by telephone in
preference to visiting a local office. The latter are often no
longer available. When Jobcentre Plus was created in 2002 it inherited
around 1,500 offices from the former Employment Service and the
former Benefits Agency. As part of the creation of the Jobcentre
Plus network, 631 former offices have been identified for closure
and 464 closed. Further offices are likely to close as a result
of the decision to centralise benefit processing and for other
reasons. Prior to the creation of Jobcentre Plus, work on pensions
was carried out in some 450 social security offices. Under The
Pension Service, this work was moved initially to 29 Pension Centres.
Since January 2005 nine have closed and a further eight will close
by April 2011.[7]
6. For many people, dealing with the Department via
a contact centre is acceptable and convenient. For example, the
Department reported that The Pension Service's 2005 customer survey
had indicated that the telephone was the preferred medium for
contact amongst a growing number of customers.[8]
However, some groups - such as those with a disability, with mental
health problems or who are frail and elderly - may have difficulties
using the telephone.
7. Despite this, the Disability and Carers Service
does not offer any face-to-face services to its 4 million customers.
This contrasts with The Pension Service, whose contact centres
are complemented by a local service, offering a home visit to
customers.[9] Customers
with a disability are potentially just as vulnerable as pensioners,
but they appear to have been a lower priority for the Department.[10]
A strong case can be made that they should have the option of
dealing with the Department face-to-face. The Department's view
is that it does not have the resources for making this choice
available to customers with a disability. Instead it has sought
to ensure that its contact centre processes are designed to take
customers carefully through their application.[11]
8. The Department does tailor some services for people
with disabilities and has set up a team to look at whether contact
centres can be more user friendly to such people. For example,
all centres operate a text phone service. The Department also
enables customers with disabilities to contact them through representative
individuals or organisations.[12]
However, the National Audit Office found that groups such as the
Citizens Advice Bureau reported problems in dealing with some
contact centres on a customer's behalf and found that the systems
in place are not consistent and were subject to widely differing
interpretations.[13]
The Department explained that it does deal with intermediary organisations
and has issued guidance to staff on how to deal with them.[14]
9. Knowing which number to call is not easy for some
customers. There are at least 55 different numbers they could
use when contacting the Department, including 11 for pensioners.[15]
More than one number is necessary in order to provide a differentiated
service for pensions, jobseekers and employers, and many of the
55 are for accessing the same Jobcentre Plus service from different
parts of the country. But the Department acknowledged that, despite
its efforts to publicise services, some customers found it hard
to find the right number. It has no target for reducing the number
of telephone numbers, but may consider introducing a single number
to act as a sign-post to the others.[16]
The problem of too many numbers is compounded by the limitations
of the Department's technology, so that a customer who rings one
service cannot be transferred to another service. This flexibility
will not be available until 2008.[17]
10. An unacceptable number of customers' calls did
not get answered in 2004-05, when the Department agreed its performance
had been poor. The centres surveyed by the National Audit Office
answered a total of 33 million incoming calls and made 7 million
outgoing calls in 2004-05.[18]
However, a further 21 million calls attempted by customers went
unanswered.[19] Performance
was particularly bad for the Disability Living Allowance and Attendance
Allowance Helpline.
11. Performance in many centres has since improved,
with the call answering rate overall increasing from 56% in 2004-05
to 84% in the first half of 2005-06.[20]
However, the performance of the Disability and Carers Service's
Benefit Enquiry Line has deteriorated as a result of the increased
attention on the Disability Living Allowance Helpline.[21]
It is too early to say yet whether the improved performance will
be sustained.
12. Customers are not aware of how much they are
paying for their call. Only a few of the numbers are free to call,
with the majority being 0845 numbers which are charged to landline
users at the local rate. Mobile phone users commonly pay a much
higher tariff, and for these customers even freephone 0800 numbers
may be expensive, as only the Pension Credit Application Line
is free to mobile users.[22]
The Department explained there were problems with free cost calls
as they can attract nuisance callers. However, it does not offer
information to callers on the cost of their call, and it is up
to the customer to say whether they might have difficulty in paying
for the call. Where the customer advises the cost is prohibitive,
the agent will offer to ring back and the Department is considering
whether its agents should make this clearer at the start of the
call.[23] The Department
estimates the average cost to customers of calling some of its
services using a landline telephone is as follows.[24]
Figure 2: Estimates of the average cost per call for different services
Service
| Basis for calculation
| Cost (p)
|
Pension Credit Application Line
| Freephone number
| Nil
|
The Pension Service
| Based on average call of 6 minutes at 3p per minute
| 18
|
Pensions Direct/RP teleclaims
| Based on average call of 6 minutes at 3p per minute
| 18
|
State Pension
| In the three centres that take claims in one call, assuming average call 20 minutes
| 60
|
State Pension and Pension Credit teleclaims
| From July 2006, assuming average call of 30 minutes
| 90
|
Disability and Carers Service
| Average call duration from initial welcome and time spent in queue is 4 minutes, 14 seconds
| 13
|
Source: The Department for Work and Pensions
2 C&AG's Report, paras 4, 5.22 Back
3
Q 148 Back
4
C&AG's Report, para 1.1 Back
5
C&AG's Report, para 1.12 Back
6
Qq 16, 18, 112 Back
7
Ev 18-38; Qq 23-29 Back
8
Q 43 Back
9
C&AG's Report, Figure 8 and para 2.7; Q 78 Back
10
Qq 88-93 Back
11
Qq 62, 67 Back
12
Qq 67, 92; C&AG's Report, paras 4.23-4.24 Back
13
C&AG's Report, paras 4.28-4.31 Back
14
Qq 126-145; Ev 41 Back
15
C&AG's Report, Figure 16 and para 2.13 Back
16
Qq 63-65 Back
17
C&AG's Report, paras 2.14-2.15 Back
18
Q3; C&AG's Report, para 4 Back
19
C&AG's Report, paras 4.10-4.11 Back
20
ibid, Figure 25 Back
21
Qq 123-125 Back
22
C&AG's Report, Figure 16 and paras 4.13-4.16 Back
23
Qq 38, 103-109, 114-115 Back
24
Ev 41 Back
|