Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
DEPARTMENT FOR
WORK AND
PENSIONS, JOBCENTRE
PLUS AND
THE PENSION
SERVICE
29 MARCH 2006
Q40 Mr Bacon: Why are they called
"warm", by the way?
Ms Gibson: Our preferred term
is "customer access" phone rather than "warm"
phone. I think "warm" phone is a bit of a jargon term.
The design of the customer access phones is that they should be
in some sort of booth or acoustic hood to maintain privacy. We
have not always been able to achieve that because of the estate's
considerations, but where we can, that is the case. As far as
is it not a little bizarre to come into an office and then be
directed to the telephone service, it is a question of us trying
to direct customers to where they are going to get the best help
for their particular requirement.
Q41 Mr Bacon: Your customers tell
you they are reluctant to use them unless absolutely necessary.
Apparently, Ms Gibson, you are not able to provide data on them
as to how much they get used.
Ms Gibson: We do not have statistics
on how widely used they are.
Q42 Mr Bacon: Why not? One of the
things you can very easily monitor is phone use. Everybody is
familiar with phone bills, and if you have an office with 10 people
in it, you can see who is using the phone the most and indeed
even where they are calling. Why can you not easily provide data
on how much they are used?
Ms Gibson: This is one of the
self-help measures that we are offering to our customers, the
other is the internet service. We do not measure currently the
use of those customer access phones.
Q43 Mr Bacon: You are just repeating
what is in this paragraph. My question is why can you not provide
the data, not do you provide data or do you not. I already know
that you do not, that is what it says in this paragraph, so repeating
that does not really help me. What I am looking for is why do
you not, given that with a telephone you pick it up, it makes
a connection, you can measure that, it goes through a computer
telephony integration, or whatever it is, and you can very easily
write a routine to enable you to see, at the touch of a button,
how much that phone is being used. Then you would immediately
be able to make comparisons across the country and see why some
are used more than others. Why do you not do that?
Ms Gibson: Certainly we can have
a look at that. We have not found a need to do so up until now.
Mr Lewis: I think there is a risk
that we will almost conclude that our phones are a bad thing.
Paragraph 37 of the Report says: "Contact centres are playing
a major role in the transformation of the DWP and have already
expanded the range of the services that can easily be accessed
by its customers whose satisfaction levels are generally high".
The Pension Service has just produced its 2005 Customer Survey
which is very interesting. It shows that its pensioner customers
increasingly want to use the telephone as their preferred medium
of contacting The Pension Service. More are doing it as their
preferred vehicle for contacting us as than was the case in 2003.
Q44 Mr Bacon: I am not disputing
that phones can be useful as a medium of communication and I am
not disputing why people have slated them, all I was saying in
relation to paragraph 4.15 is that your customers appear to be
reluctant to use them unless absolutely necessary. If you measured
how much they are being used and looked at where they are being
used more, where they are being used less, you might be able to
figure out why. If you are spending money installing them and
they are not being used, then that surely is a waste.
Mr Lewis: This is a very rarefied
group of customers who come into our offices, normally for one
purpose, and then, in a sense, ask about a different service.
In those circumstances it is often better, rather than a member
of staff whose job it is not trying to provide the service, for
us to say, "If you use this telephone which is here in the
office and ring this number, then you will be connected to a colleague
who will be able to provide that service". There are issues,
in some cases, about whether we have got enough of those phones
and they are sited perfectly et cetera, though colleagues
who have been into our new Jobcentre Plus offices will know that
the physical environment is vastly better than ever it was in
the former Social Security office. This is quite a rarefied group
of our customers.
Ms Grossman: I also wanted to
add that the NAO Report pointed out that pensioners who use the
telephone are our most satisfied customers, so we are clearly
doing something right.
Q45 Chairman: I want to comment on
that as you are sitting here, before this line of questioning
gets forgotten about. I do not think it was an entirely full answer
when you said you were entirely content with the service. Shall
we look at paragraph 4.12 again which Mr Bacon referred to. There
you have got a target of answering 80% of calls in 20 seconds.
If you read further down the page you see that only seven of the
58 sites that reported data have achieved this target. This is
very important—let us congratulate Ms Grossman, shall we—if
we read her CV we see that: "Under Janet's leadership, The
Pension Service operations have improved efficiency and customer
service, reducing staff numbers by 26% whilst improving service
levels in the last 18 months". She has done a fantastic job
and I pay tribute to her. When we need to summon you back in a
couple of years' time, which I will obviously do, will you be
able to tell us that Ms Grossman has been promoted and received
a pay rise but those responsible for a lagging performance elsewhere
have been sacked and moved on?
Mr Lewis: Without over-personalising—
Q46 Chairman: I only personalise
when I praise.
Mr Lewis: Janet Grossman is good
example that increasingly we have brought people with very serious
expertise into the Department from other sectors. I am not satisfied
with our performance in the speed of call handling right across
the Department's contact centres. If, however, you compare our
2005-06 performance to date with 2004-05, in every case we are
increasing the proportion of calls that we are answering in all
of our major businesses, Jobcentre Plus and The Pension Service,
compared with where we were. To give you one example, in The Pension
Service where the target is the industry standard of 80% within
20 seconds, we only achieved that in 56% of the cases in 2004-05.
So far in 2005-06 we are at 80%, so we are hitting that target.
My ambition is to hit it in every case.[2]
Chairman: Like you should. Thank you
very much.
Q47 Greg Clark: Mr Lewis, the benefit
system has become more complex in recent years and there are reasons
for that which we understand. Call centres offer the opportunity
to help people cut through that complexity, so I agree that the
potential is significant. The experience from my own constituency
call centre is that a large number of people come to me because
they have been completely befuddled by the call centre process.
So far from helping them through the complexity, it has proved
to be a rather alienating experience. Is that something you would
recognise?
Mr Lewis: I am absolutely sure
that those of your constituents who have said that to you, that
was their experience because people tell it as it is. I would
not want to gainsay any one of your constituents. I am absolutely
sure that there are times when our performance in explaining and
answering customer queries is not as clear and not as good as
it should be. It is worth saying that the NAO's survey itself
found that 80% of the customers they interviewed—this was
their survey of our customers—said they had their query
resolved in one phone call. One of the facts of life—and
my last appearance before this Committee was to respond to the
NAO's Report on the complexity of the benefit system—is
we have a very complex benefit system. At times, our contact centres
can help because if we have contact centres with staff with the
right training, they can cut through some of that complexity and
help people to the service and the information that they do need.
It is a tough job.
Q48 Greg Clark: That is what they
should do. Can we look at this business of call backs, which I
think has been a particular problem with Jobcentre Plus. Anyone
calling Jobcentre Plus has presumably lost their job and they
are about to claim benefits. They are at a point of crisis in
their lives. The idea that we see on page 53 that whilst having
a target of 24 hours it was often over 14 working days before
people were called back, when people were in despair, they had
lost their job and had got no benefits, the stress that must cause
is enormous. Is it the case that they cannot claim benefits until
they have had their interview at Jobcentre Plus?
Mr Lewis: I will ask Val Gibson
to go through the system with you and explain it, just to be clear.
The figures that you quote for some of the times that it was taking
us to make call backs during last summer were unacceptable and
they are vastly better now. It is and remains the case and was
the case then that anyone who said, when they got through to our
centre, they were in immediate hardship would have been dealt
with on a fast track.
Ms Gibson: That is true. The process
for a customer currently is that they make a short call to Jobcentre
Plus where we determine their likely entitlement to benefit. That
is followed with a call back, which is the Harper process, a 24-hour
standard. At that call back, where it is appropriate we book a
work-focused interview in their local job centre so that we can
talk to them about work, resolve any final benefit enquiries and
then process their claim. You are right to say that they cannot
get their benefit until the call back has been conducted and,
indeed, those later parts of the process.
Q49 Greg Clark: If you have got a
phased delay there, it is crucial if people cannot claim their
benefits.
Ms Gibson: Yes, it is. As Leigh
said, we were in those sorts of difficulties. Indeed, now, anyone
who is in personal hardship is entitled to be considered for an
emergency payment.
Q50 Greg Clark: Is that the first
question you ask?
Ms Gibson: It is not the first
question we ask, but we would establish that within the call and,
if so, refer them to the job centre.
Q51 Greg Clark: Is it part of the
standard script?
Ms Gibson: No, it is not.
Q52 Greg Clark: People are unaware
of this concession?
Ms Gibson: People may or may not
be aware of the concession. They are certainly aware of their
own circumstances and can represent those to us.
Q53 Greg Clark: You should be there
to help them, especially with these stressful circumstances, to
guide them through and tell them what they are entitled to. Your
answer to that is they have three separate transactions that they
have to make before they can get benefits. The fact is that there
is somewhere in the system, a concession that if people are in
hardship then they can get their benefits quickly, but you have
to know about it, you have to be an insider. Perhaps, as a result
of this, you have to be an MP to be able to advise them if there
is a concession. Why is it not part of your script if this is
to help people to immediately say to all the callers, "Are
you in extreme financial difficulties and, if so, we can help".
Why is that not part of the script?
Ms Gibson: Can I say something
about what we are trialling at the moment in Grimsby which seeks
to address some of the problems you are talking about.
Q54 Greg Clark: Yes, but before we
do that, why is it not part of your script to offer people this
opportunity to go straight to benefits?
Ms Gibson: It may not be part
of the script but that does not mean it is not part of the interaction
with the customer.
Q55 Greg Clark: The script is ordinary,
it is very clear from this Report that you encourage and require
people to stick to the script and the NAO made it clear that departures
from the script result in errors. The whole point of the context
of the script is to get people to stick to it. This idea that
they should leave that undermines the whole point of the context.
It is individual discretion that needs to be exercised, they would
be better off having face-to-face interviews, would they not?
Mr Lewis: Let me say one thing
and then ask Val to say something. Again, this is inevitably a
balance because if we were to ask every single customer in effect
whether they would like to be fast-tracked then we would have
to have the capacity and the capability to do that and that would
inevitably be very resource intensive. What we do seek to do,
however, is if there is any indication that a customer is in immediate
financial need then they will be fast-tracked through the system.
Q56 Greg Clark: I submit that the
Department has more resources than someone who has lost their
job and needs to claim benefits. The idea that you pass on financial
risk to your vulnerable customers to pay for, in effect, your
failures if you cannot see them within 24 hours I think is unacceptable.
Just to move on a little bit, you said that the figures had improved
recently but on page 53 at table 28—table 28 is a month
in the life of this call centre Jobcentre Plus—the footnote
says "Data on the booking ahead period for call backs was
only collected in August 2005 and September 2005. The Department
no longer records this data." Is that inaccurate?
Mr Lewis: That data is of a different
nature which is the period of time that elapses between the call
back and the person coming into one of our offices. It is not
the data on call back times which has very significantly improved.
Q57 Greg Clark: Can you explain that
because this table is not about the figure you described, this
is about the target, the number of days it takes to call back,
so the footnote is related to that. Can I ask the NAO to explain
the tables and the footnote I assume relates to the data in the
table?
Mr Lonsdale: This is the detailed
information from a number of Jobcentre Plus contact centres. As
you say, over a short period of weeks the average call back period
is shown in the middle and this is the range across the country.
Q58 Greg Clark: The call back data
is no longer being collected, presumably it is the data in this
table that you are no longer collecting?
Mr Lonsdale: We could not take
it any further forward because the data was not available.
Q59 Greg Clark: There we are. That
is my point, Mr Lewis.
Mr Lewis: I think what I will
need to do is look into this because I most certainly have the
data on call backs which I have been quoting to the Committee
this afternoon. The data shows that our performance in call backs
has very substantially improved and in February, so only one month
ago—it is very much real time data—we made 64% of
call backs within 24 hours and over 90% in 48 hours.
2 Note by witness: My original answer to question
46 was inaccurate. In 2004-05, The Pension Service answered 53.4%
of calls within 30 seconds and not 56% in 20 seconds as I stated.
I apologise that my answer was inaccurate. Back
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