Demands on Customer Service Hit Record High
News article
Fylde Council Logo
Since the last week of March, Fylde Council has been inundated with calls from the public about a number of services and staff have pulled out all the stops to answer as many calls as possible.
The number of calls to the council’s main phone line has quadrupled because a number of services have needed to send out information at the same time.
In March over 37,000 Council Tax bills were sent to every property in the borough, along with thousands of business rate bills and at the same time everyone who receives benefits was sent an update. Further to this every household has been receiving a new white sack to put their recycled cardboard in because of changes made to the recycling requirements.
The council does experience a large increase in the volume of calls at this time of year because of the Council Tax and benefit letters that must be sent out. To accommodate this staff leave is suspended and all available agents man the phones. However, this year the added requirement to issue a white sack to every household for the recycling changes has led to the highest volume of calls per day ever received.
As a consequence a number of customers have struggled to get through to the council by phone and many have been required to wait longer than normal. Additional information has been placed on the website to make sure that everything customers need to know about all services is available at any time.
It is difficult to recruit temporary staff with the necessary knowledge and understanding of the range of services delivered by the council and the systems used by the call centre staff.
Karen Buckley, Portfolio Holder for Partnerships and Community Engagement, said: “We would like to apologise to those customers that have struggled to get through to the council over the last week and to those that have had to wait for their call to be answered.
“Everything is being done to answer every call and all the information is easily available on the website at anytime which thousands of customers are taking advantage of.
“The council expects the high volume of calls to continue for another week and will answer every call possible and customers do have the option to leave their number and we will call them back. However, if you need to know anything about your Council Tax bill, benefit form or the white sacks then simply go to www.fylde.gov.uk at any time.”
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