Average wait times for calls to Slough council reduces following customer service improvements

The average waiting time for residents to get through to Slough Borough Council has decreased following work to improve customer service, a meeting heard this week.

At Monday night’s cabinet meeting at Observatory House officer Sarah Hayward urged caution ‘on any notes of improved performance’ for customer service.

But she added that the team are ‘working really hard to deliver a better service’ and improvement for customers.

Cllr Chandra Muvvala (Con, Langley Marish) revealed that customers service figures had recently improved but there is still ‘a long way to go’.

He stated that in July the average waiting time for residents calling the council was 15 minutes and the percentage of calls answered was 56.1 per cent.

However, he said this has since risen to average waiting time of 11 minutes and more than 65 per cent of calls being answered.

“I know average wait time is always misleading, we should not focus only on that but that is one of the metrics that we need to consider, because whenever I speak to residents they say ‘we contacted the council and we had to wait for 30 minutes’.”

Cllr Muvvala explained that the council is also educating residents on using digital channels as an alternative for contacting the council.

The Conservative councillor added that officers are also working with other departments such as the council tax, housing benefit and school admissions and doing a ‘deep dive’ into various sections of various department where a high number of calls are being received.

“We are very confident that we’ll deliver better customer service.”

Ms Hayward explained that officers have carried out work in certain areas which may have helped to reduce call waiting times, including better prioritisation of emails to prevent follow up calls.

Officers are also currently conducting a piece of work to review the system which provides options to callers and diverts them which Ms Hayward added should improve efficiency.

“They [the team] are doing a great job, but performance may be a little bit variable for some months to come while we really cement that improvement work,” she said.

Cllr Iftakhar Ahmed (Con, Wexham Court) said: “Customer service is the key for Slough residents and I have grave concerns.

"I have made it very clear from the outset that we are resident-focused and we will continue to deliver the services that they rightfully deserve. I’m sure the corporate leadership team will endeavour to deliver that on our behalf.

“But there’s a lot of work [that] needs to be done still.”