Issue - meetings

That the Committee notes the design principles underpinning the creation of a

single Contact Centre and endorses the progress made towards delivering the

Digital Customer theme of the Digital Strategy.

The Chief Officer (Governance) introduced the report to provide an update on progress and to give assurance to the Committee on the design principles underpinning the creation of a single contact centre as part of delivering the digital customer theme of the digital strategy.

The Chief Officer advised that in March 2018, Cabinet had agreed to the creation of a single Contact Centre starting initially with the joining of the Contact Centres serving Streetscene and Housing.  He outlined the key objectives of the project which were to build resilience within the combined team to deal effectively with peak call/incident times, staff absence and vacancies, improve Welsh language provision, and provide customers with access to multiple services via their Customer Account.

The Chief Officer explained that as part of improving digital services the Council would upgrade the online capability of the housing software to enable tenants to link directly to their housing account details from the Flintshire Customer Account page on the Council’s website, and view rent account details, repairs, applications, account information, and make payments.

The first phase of the project for a combined contact centre was being implemented with action concentrating on the amalgamation of roles in Housing and Streetscene into a common job description for contact centre agents and the appointment of a manager overseeing the single service; review and improvement of information and content on the Flintshire website for customers to find information and self-serve; and the implementation of the online Housing capability.  It was planned that Phase 1 would be operational from mid March 2019, however, a review of the technical and staff position would be undertaken in advance to ensure services would be delivered with no degradation of quality as a result.

The Chief Officer reported that discussions were also taking place with other services to identify and agree the scope of services which could be transitioned into the combined contact centre at a later date.  The intention was to aim for a fully combined contact centre operating from Ty Dewi Sant, Ewloe, from April 2020.  The Chief Officer said a further report on the Digital Strategy would be submitted to the Committee to provide an update on progress early next year.   He also referred to the Digital Strategy workshop which would be held for all Members on 16 January 2019.

Councillor Geoff Collett asked if the digital strategy would be delivered on time.  He also referred to the invest to save budget allocation of £550k and asked if this was a one-off or annual allocation.  In response the Chief Officer explained that the programme was currently on target for mid-March next year, however, an assessment of the ‘readiness’ of services to go live would be undertaken in advance to ensure no disruption to services would occur.  Referring to the budget allocation of £550k the Chief Officer advised that this was not an annual cost and the funding would be used to fund three key new posts for the delivery of the Digital Customer project,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 30