29 July 2007
When I need help from the Council no one in the Directorates is ever available to answer telephone calls and the quality of the Council's response is certainly not impressive. Calls to the Call Centre at Landmark Place sometimes take more than 23 minutes to be answered by a human being.
I would like the Council to:
Why have you failed to ensure the Council you lead is providing a genuinely excellent first-class service to the people of Slough instead of misleading the public with false and frequent claims of mythical excellence?
I am very sorry to hear that a customer had to wait for 23 minutes on the phone. Normally our calls are answered within 2 minutes.
Unfortunately, the Customer Service Centre has been extremely busy recently due to new regulations for people claiming single person discount and more than 800 summonses being issued. Our average queuing time for general enquiries was 4 minutes during this busy time but I appreciate this meant many customers waited longer.
We operate a call back process when we are busy and record the details including when the customer was called back. This is usually the next day although at exceptional times we have gone to a 'call back within 3 days' policy. At all times customers are advised of when approximately to expect their call to be returned. We attempt all call backs three times, at different times of the day. In the event we have not successfully contacted the customer after three attempts, the customer record is noted and the call back closed. I would like to apologise again for the delay.
We do also offer the option to email us at www.enquiries@slough.gov.uk and we will respond within 10 days, or visit us at Landmark Place, Britwell or Cippenham Library.
