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PRIVACY
Economic Development

Birmingham city council call centre still not up to scratch

Backbench councillors said satisfaction levels remained too low and have launched a further inquiry into the service.

Birmingham City Council

Residents contacting levels of satisfaction since the facility was brought in-house last autumn, according to a report.

The service, which deals with thousands of calls per day on a range of services from bin collections to benefits, has seen ratings for happiness among users rise since Capita-Service Birmingham gave up the contract in November.

However, backbench councillors said satisfaction levels remained too low and have launched a further inquiry into the service.

Capita had originally claimed its satisfaction rates were 97 per cent, but councillors, who were inundated with complaints, found the methodology flawed and instigated new text message surveys last year.

The subsequent independent surveys found customer satisfaction .

The city council took the decision to bring the call centre in house after finding woeful levels of customer service which were blamed on ‘a profit driven call centre rewarded on increasing call volume’ rather than focusing on quality of service.

In particular they found the information taken by call handlers too often was not acted on by the council departments concerned.

The satisfaction rates took a massive dip following the transfer to council control in November but subsequently the rate rose to 56 per cent by May this year.