Birmingham City Council's Contact Centre; delivering excellence in customer service
Service Birmingham took over responsibility for the operation of the council's contact centre in early 2010, bringing a wealth of experience from Capita, who have extensive experience of delivering award-winning contact centre services.
Benefiting from web-based telephony, coupled with ongoing training, staff now have the tools to support the council's aims for service improvement by delivering world-class services on the frontline.
Approximately a third of contact centre employees have achieved the Institute of Customer Services (ICS) professional certificate and the remainder of our staff are working towards achieving this standard.
In December 2010, less than a year after Service Birmingham took over operations at the contact centre, we were awarded Customer Services Excellence (CSE) accreditation. CSE is the Government's customer service standard.
Their assessor commented: "The contact centre service in Birmingham has demonstrated its commitment to the principles of Customer Service Excellence and deserves its accreditation to the standard."
In order to maintain the standard, Service Birmingham is continuously improving service provision, and ensuring that the CSE principles are embedded in everything we do.
"Service Birmingham delivers a successful 24/7 contact centre service for citizens, handling over two million calls a year from our two sites in Birmingham. The call types are diverse and cover a number of services such as housing repairs, council tax billing and collection, housing benefit claims and refuse collection. There is an emergency duty team for referrals to social services or the police.
"A large number of these service types require first-time resolution or a referral to third parties. For example, housing repairs have three contract partners, so our staff have to be trained to high standards in call diagnostics and referrals to ensure effective services."
Paul Stanfield, Contact Centre Director of Operations.
If you would like to know more about Service Birmingham's contact centre operations, or about the web-based telephony and infrastructure used to support these operations, please contact us
