House of Commons - Public Accounts

Select Committee on Public Accounts Fifty-Third Report

2 Managing contact centres to deliver a high quality and cost-effective service

13. The Department's contact centres serve 28 million customers. To provide a high quality service contact centre managers must match demand with available resources, including staff, telephony and IT. Resources must be managed continuously to meet fluctuations in demand. Managers must also be able to monitor staff performance, including time taken on calls and on breaks, drawing on real time information.[25]

14. Customer satisfaction with the service provided is generally very high. In the National Audit Office survey of customers, 97% said they were dealt with politely, 86% that their call was dealt with in a reasonable length of time and 80% that their query was resolved in one call.[26] However, although the majority of customers are happy, given the large numbers using these services, a small dissatisfied proportion amounts to many tens of thousands of people and there is evidence that some find dealing with contact centres an alienating experience which does not help them deal with the complexity of the system.[27]

15. From the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report the Committee concluded that customers with a disability have received a worse service than other groups of customers.[28] In 2004-05 only 20% of calls to the Disability and Carers Service were answered and nearly 80% blocked, or abandoned by customers in frustration. The Department acknowledged that the previous service to customers with a disability had been unacceptable, but said the service has now been transformed through improvements in technology.[29] The number of customers who get through to the Disability and Carers Service at the first attempt had increased from 44% to 80%.[30]

16. Contact centres can help shield customers from the complexity of the benefits system. For example, making a call to a contact centre now replaces the need for customers to fill out a lengthy application form to claim Jobseeker's Allowance. The Pension Service also allows customers to make an application for Pension Credit and Housing Benefit in the same call, significantly reducing the burden on the customer.[31] This assistance ought to help the Department reduce errors caused by customers but it has not so far been able to quantify the effects.[32] However, it is a matter of concern that the accuracy of information provided by contact centres to customers scores lowest in mystery shopping exercises.[33] The Department has chosen to have staff fully trained on a few benefits rather than to have a more generalist knowledge of all the benefits, in order to reduce the scope for erroneous advice.[34]

17. Jobcentre Plus has had a poor record of completing call backs to customers in a timely manner. Its performance statistics showed that the proportion completed in September 2005 within the 24 hour target was as low as 10% and in some centres, it took as long as two weeks to complete calls.[35] Call backs are an integral part of the process of applying for benefit, and a long wait results in delay to the customers' benefit payments. There is a fast-track application process available, but it is not drawn to the customer's attention in the contact centre script, from which agents are encouraged not to divert.[36] Where their benefit is delayed, customers may apply for a Social Fund Crisis Loan. Some 38% of such payments are currently made to cover living expenses while waiting for benefits or wages, an issue this Committee reported on in 2005.[37] The Department said its latest statistics showed that call back performance had improved greatly and by March 2006 over 67% were completed within 24 hours and 96% within 48 hours.[38]

18. Each service has its own targets for the speed with which calls are answered. In Jobcentre Plus Direct and Employer Direct, the target is to answer 80% within 20 seconds. This is in line with the current call centre industry standard. The Pension Service and the Disability and Carers Service aim to answer within 30 seconds. Only seven out of 58 sites responding to the National Audit Office survey actually met their target for speed of answering in 2004-05. The Department said its first priority is to try and ensure it meets its current targets and would then go further if it could within the resources available.[39] In particular, The Pension Service is keen to move to a 20 seconds target and the Department is considering whether the call answering time should be standard across all agencies.

19. Managing contact centres efficiently and effectively depends on making good use of the staff available, deploying them to meet fluctuating demand. Our predecessor's report in 2003 found that the Child Benefit Centre - at that time part of the Department for Work and Pensions - had staffing arrangements which poorly reflected the actual pattern of calls received, due to the redeployment of staff working flexi-time. The Committee recommended that staffing arrangements should reflect the pattern of calls received.[40] Despite this, around 70% of the Department's contact centre staff are on flexi-time contracts, whose core hours do not match the peaks of contact centre work.[41] Many agents have been redeployed from elsewhere in the Department. The Department said it is proud of its family friendly employment policies but recognises that more suitable staffing arrangements are needed. It is in discussions with staff and trade unions aimed at ensuring that working patterns are tailored to the needs of contact centres.[42]

20. Problems with the IT systems are limiting the efficient operation of the Department's contact centres. During a telephone call, agents have access to a number of different systems showing customer information. However, these are not sufficiently joined up and customers have to provide the same information on a number of occasions when applying for benefits or pensions, much of which is already held somewhere else by the Department.[43] Sometimes, information entered onto one IT system by the contact centre has to be printed out and input again onto another IT system.[44]

21. The average cost to the Department of handling a transaction by telephone is around £3, whereas by post it is around £5.[45] It is reasonable to conclude that the Department's contact centres are delivering improvements in value for money over the old paper-based systems. This is backed up by evidence of wider cost savings in the Department, but the Department was unable to be specific about the actual amount.[46] Introducing contact centres needs to be carefully managed to ensure that the Department's efficiency savings - including the contraction of the local office network - are not being made at the expense of customers.

22. The Department's cost data and management information is incomplete in a number of respects. For example, the information necessary to establish its full costs is not available, and it does not know how much it has saved directly as a result of introducing contact centres.[47] The Department does not have sufficient historic data to enable it to make operational forecasts of customer demand for its contact centres.[48] It also does not keep a record of how many people use its customer access points ('warm' phones) to call contact centres.[49]

23. The Department acknowledges that there are still gaps in its cost data and management information, but it is making improvements in its record keeping.[50] These improvements include the balanced scorecard, which will include a range of measures of performance including cost, customer service, customer satisfaction, staff productivity and absence rates. However, the data in the scorecard is currently not complete and it can only be used informally. The full scorecard will not be available to contact centre managers until 2007.[51]

25 C&AG's Report, para 3.2 Back

26 ibid, paras 5.5-5.9 Back

27 Q 47 Back

28 C&AG's Report, Figures 7, 17, 25, 27 Back

29 Qq 93-96 Back

30 C&AG's Report, para 5.19 Back

31 ibid, Figure 13; Qq 112-113 Back

32 Qq 82-85 Back

33 C&AG's Report, Figure 42 Back

34 Q 121 Back

35 C&AG's Report, Figures 28-29 Back

36 Qq 48-55 Back