Hampshire County Council Amended decision sheet

Cabinet Item 9

19 December 2005

Contact Centre

Report by the Director of Property, Business and Regulatory Services and

Chairman of the Contact Centre Board

1

Summary

1.1

The following decisions were made:

a. That approval be given for the implementation of a Corporate Customer Service Centre (focussed on public access to information and services by telephone and e-mail) in accordance with the strategy, approach and business case outlined in the attached report.


b. That an invest to save reserve be created from additional capital receipts and planned slippage from the locally financed capital programme, subject to the final budget decisions.


c. Departmental budgets be adjusted to ensure that the relevant costs and efficiency savings are achieved.

d. That a progress report be submitted in due course.

2

Reason

2.1

This decision supports Aim 5 of the Corporate Strategy - Improving Services, by improving customer access to services and improving the customer experience when contacting the Council, and reducing, over time, the cost per customer contact through the more effective use of resources and customer contact channels.

3

Other options considered and rejected

3.1

3.2

The option of adopting a more federal approach to managing customer contact through departmental contact centres (similar to existing models), using common technology and meeting corporate standards has been considered and rejected due to the inability of this approach to achieve sufficiently joined-up citizen focussed service access, and inability to achieve the economies of scale that a corporate approach can deliver, and no realisable efficiency gains.

It is proposed that the Corporate Customer Service Centre is implemented as an in-house operation. The possibility of outsourcing has been considered and rejected for the time being based on strategic, economic and technical grounds. Once developed and implemented other models of provision would exist.

4

Conflicts of interest declared by the decision-maker or other Executive Member consulted

4.1

Not applicable

5

Dispensation granted by the Standards Committee

5.1

Not applicable

6

Reason(s) for the matter being dealt with if urgent

6.1

Not applicable

Approved by:

..........................

Date of decision:

.........................