Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
DEPARTMENT FOR
WORK AND
PENSIONS, JOBCENTRE
PLUS AND
THE PENSION
SERVICE
29 MARCH 2006
Q20 Mr Mitchell: I have forgotten
what the problem was, but there was certainly a problem in the
Grimsby Jobcentre. People had to ring Hull to register for unemployment
benefit. They had to make the first call to the call centre. It
is not only the alien act of ringing Hull, which is like asking
people to ring Transylvania as far as Grimsby is concerned, but
it was the fact that they could not get through, the phones were
not answered. There must be occasions like that when you have
got a particular problem in a local office when your call centre
system gets jammed up?
Mr Lewis: I wonder if I can, at
this point, pass over to Val Gibson because I think she may be
able to say more about the specific problems because they did
exist, you are absolutely right.
Q21 Mr Mitchell: I think I wrote
to you about that.
Mr Lewis: Indeed, I think you
did.
Ms Gibson: As Leigh said, there
were some specific problems in our contact centres dealing with
claims to benefits during last summer and they are acknowledged
in the NAO Report. The Report also acknowledges the improvements
that have been made since then. We have achieved our target of
answering 90% of all calls every month from November on. We are
answering them quickly because every month from December we have
achieved our target, answering rate of 80% in 20 seconds. I think
we are now on top of the problem. It was a very difficult summer
for customers. We know that many tried and could not get through.
We worked quickly to resolve that, and we worked quickly in collaboration
with colleagues in job centres and benefit delivery sections so
that we could make sure that the customers got the service they
needed and got their benefit paid.
Q22 Mr Mitchell: I cannot say that
I have received a lot of complaints from my constituents because
I have not, in fact, except that people find it difficult getting
through. More importantly, older people who do not have a portable
telephone, and often do not have a telephone at home, do not know
what to do when they are told they will be rung back. What do
they do?
Mr Lewis: If someone really does
not have a convenient telephone then we will always deal with
them in one of our offices face-to-face. It is as simple as that.
Q23 Mr Bacon: Mr Leigh, how many
local offices have closed?
Mr Lewis: We are going through
a process which followed from the merger of the then Employment
Service and the then Benefit Agency to form Jobcentre Plus, and
we are reducing from—Val Gibson may have the specific figures—around
1,500 local offices to around 1,000.
Q24 Mr Bacon: How many have closed
so far, Ms Gibson?
Ms Gibson: I do not have the specific
figures, but we can let you have them.
Q25 Mr Bacon: This is a radical change
to the pattern of work in the Department and in job centres. I
would imagine that knowing how many offices have closed hitherto
is a pretty important thing to know.
Mr Lewis: We have opened now about
750 of the new style offices.
Q26 Mr Bacon: Do you mean 750 contact
centres?
Mr Lewis: No. If your question
is about contact centres, I cannot absolutely answer the question.
Q27 Mr Bacon: It is not. What I am
trying to find out is how many local offices have closed, which
neither of you seem to know. Ms Grossman, do you know?
Ms Grossman: The Pension Service
came out of 450 offices but developed a local service capability.
We visit over 800,000 pensioners in their own homes where it is
most convenient to them but we did transition from 450 offices
into 29 call centres to begin with.
Q28 Mr Bacon: Mr Leigh, is it possible
that you could write to the Committee with a note both on The
Pension Service and on Jobcentre Plus with how many local offices
you had to start with, how many you are planning to close, how
many you have closed so far and how many there are still left
to close? [1]
Mr Lewis: Most certainly. Can
I make one point because it can sound as if we are cutting back
hugely on the geographic scope. Often, what we have done is to
close two offices almost literally where we had two offices on
two different sides of the street and bring them into one.
Q29 Mr Bacon: I am sure you can put
that in your note. If you would not mind saying where they are
as well, including the ones you have not yet closed but are planning
to close.
Mr Lewis: Most certainly.
Q30 Mr Bacon: You said, in relation
to the Chairman's question about figure 25 on page 49, that the
Disability and Carers Service was behind the others, but you have
now fundamentally re-engineered the system, and there is new telephony.
I must say, when I looked at that graph, it really struck me that
the grey bar for the Disability and Carers Service, that is to
say the calls that were blocked or the customers heard an engaged
tone, was nearly 80%, far, far poorer than the others for the
most vulnerable group, the disabled and the carers. What was the
telephone service you had before? What was the system you had
before? If you had to get rid of them to put new telephony in,
you had to get rid of them to fundamentally re-engineer.
Mr Lewis: It was an inadequate
one, self-evidently.
Q31 Mr Bacon: Was it one that you
had installed for the purpose which then turned out to be unsuitable
so you scrapped it?
Mr Lewis: It is one that had been
inherited. The Disability and Carers Service only came into existence
as a separate business relatively recently. It inherited telephony
which was quite clearly not fit-for-purpose. The actual figure,
77% of calls were blocked in 2004-05 to the DLA helpline and people
rang many times and did not get through. That was completely unacceptable,
just to be clear. The transformation which has been achieved is
a remarkable one, but it is a shame and a great pity that the
service was as poor as it was in 2004-05.
Q32 Mr Bacon: Paragraph 4.8 says
that only some of the contact centres have useful messages for
the customers waiting in a queue. It seems a fairly simple thing
to make sure that your queuing system provides messages and yet
only some do. Why is that? When are they all going to do that?
Mr Lewis: In general, it says
if you look on the same page, 4.9: "All the automated systems
used by the Department comply with good practice. In particular,
they have short scripts and offer useful information to the caller".
Q33 Mr Bacon: Are you saying that
they all provide useful messages?
Mr Lewis: No, I am not saying
every single one.
Q34 Mr Bacon: With respect, my question
was not about whether they all had short scripts or not, my question
was why do they not all have useful messages for the customer.
Mr Lewis: Picking up what other
colleagues have said, we try to avoid what one does find in many
commercial centres, which is when the number is answered you then
get a bewildering array of, "If your call is about X press
button one" and 15 minutes later, "If your call is about
something else, press button 92".
Q35 Mr Bacon: People have topped
themselves while they were waiting!
Mr Lewis: Indeed. We do not use
that. In general, we try and answer the phone when it rings. I
think that is one of the reasons why the great majority of our
customers say they find getting through to us easy and convenient.
Q36 Mr Bacon: You mentioned your
comparison with the private sector being quite favourable. In
paragraph 4.12 it says: "Each agency has internal targets
to answer customers' telephone calls within 30 seconds".
Later on in that paragraph it says: "Answering 80% of calls
in 20 seconds is the current call centre industry standard and
the Department is considering whether to make this consistent
across all agencies". You obviously have not done it yet.
How far has your consideration reached and are you going to do
it?
Mr Lewis: I would like to do it.
Q37 Mr Bacon: Is it a question of
cost?
Mr Lewis: Yes, it is. Inevitably,
before you take on a more demanding target you have to know that
you have got the resources to be able to meet that target. I think
our first priority, as my colleagues have said, is to try and
ensure that we can hit our targets. Some of our businesses already
have a target of 80% within 20 seconds just to be clear, and others
have a target of 80% within 30 seconds. My priority is to get
everyone meeting the current targets and then I would like to
go further, but of course, there are resource considerations in
that.
Q38 Mr Bacon: I would like to ask
you about the cost of the calls because many of your customers,
almost by definition most of them, are in frustrating circumstances,
they are on low income. What would it cost to make all your calls
free? Have you considered doing that?
Mr Lewis: Yes, we have. We do
have some 0800 numbers. You will have seen that the Pension Credit
application is an 0800 number. Almost all of our numbers are low
cost calls, 0845, which are about three pence per minute. They
are relatively low cost calls. If any of our customers tell us
that the cost of the call, even at those charges, is prohibitive,
then we will offer to ring them back. There are some real difficulties
with having free cost calls because you do get an awful lot of
what you might call nuisance calls made by people to 0800 numbers,
so there are some balancing considerations. In general, there
has been very little complaint or feedback from our customers
about the cost of our 0845 calls.
Q39 Mr Bacon: Can I get you to turn
your attention to page 52, paragraph 4.15. It talks about the
"warm" phones that are connected to the contact centres
which customers can use and are free. These are phones inside
the Jobcentre Plus offices. I must say the first time I read this
it looked slightly Kafkaesque that you go into what you think
is the place you are going to get your service, where at least
there still is a local office, and you are told to get on the
phone to the contact centre. It also says that the customers do
not use them because they do not like them because there is no
privacy, which more or less destroys the point. First of all,
would it not be very easy to create little booths which are soundproofed
and there is a degree of privacy? Secondly, why on earth is this
happening? Is it not slightly crazy that the staff in that local
office are so unable to help you that the only thing they can
tell the customer to do is "phone the contact centre"?
Mr Lewis: I think I am going to
pass over to Val Gibson to take the specifics and, if I may, I
will seek to add at the end to try and reach your general point.
1 Ev 18-38 Back
| 
