21 December 2011

Customer service slides!

Customer service has been on the slide for months and here are some slides prepared by the project manager which tell you all about it ( maybe, hard to say really what some of it is about ).

click to enlarge: back to return






sorry, I have cropped John Hooton. Financial & Commercial

There is only so much nonsense that Mr Mustard can read. He decided to write a shorter version of the above and here it is.

Mr Mustard's Customer Service

A holistic experience is promised. Can't wait. Can you tell me the times that the Summers Lane Recycling Centre is open and can you do a whole body massage on Wednesday please?

Advocate for the customer - so one department will fight the other one for you. Mr Mustard prefers to fight his own battles thank you very much.

You had better mind how you share data with partners as they might not be registered under the Data Protection Act. You will check won't you? No, Mr Mustard means before you give them the data.

Commissioners. Mr Mustard hasn't featured any non-jobs for a while. These posts must duplicate what other managers are, or should already be, doing but doubtless this will lead to another 10 or 20 managers being employed on £70,000 each.

Note that 5 meetings have taken place with 4 bidders so that is 20 talking shops have taken place. Each of the four remaining bidders has submitted an essay "Why our customer service is the best choice - an Outline Solution" in 30,000 words. The 4 are going to be whittled down to 2 or 3 for the final stage.

For 3 months up to 40 staff have been holed up at Trowers & Hamlins, Solicitors, having a bit of a read and a chat. Mr Mustard is there before you. An FOI request for the legal bill has already been submitted.

and now a real treat. The words of the "Service Lead" Kari Manovitch who appears to be a Strategy Manager ( make up your own jokes about strategy and Barnet Council )

From: onebarnet
Sent: 16 December 2011
To: onebarnet (talking to yourself?)


Subject: NSCSO weekly update 16 December 2011

Dear colleagues,

We have reached an important milestone, with four bidders having submitting their four separate proposals for the NSCSO contract, and the evaluation of these proposals commencing at the offices of our legal advisors, Trowers and Hamlins. The evaluation has been a significant logistical effort with hundreds of pages of documentation being securely printed, transferred and allocated to the correct individuals, and a range of security safeguards implemented. More than 40 Barnet officers are participating in this process, and have already spent many hours reading the material and noting strengths, weaknesses and clarification questions. The process will pause at the end of this week and then re-commence in January when the scores will be recorded, challenged and finalised.

The attention being paid to get this right has been really impressive, and I would like to say a big thank you to everyone involved.

Bidders and staff will be notified of the outcome when the report recommending up to three bidders goes to Cabinet Resources Committee on 28 February.

The core project team has also started planning the work that needs to take place before the second phase of dialogue commences in March. This includes updating the business case and the data room contents.

The project manager Alison Woodcraft has been meeting with all the service leads to gather their feedback on the project so far, which is providing useful insights to feed into the planning process.

An important task for us is to refresh the information about the project on the intranet, so if there’s anything you would like to see on there, please respond to this email with your suggestions. One of the things we are planning to add in January is a timetable of key dates for the project so that it is easier for you to keep track of where we are in the process. You might also find it useful to view a presentation that has been recently added to the intranet which sets out the strategic intent for the project as well as some key details about the bidding and evaluation process.

As this is the last message before Christmas, best wishes for a happy holiday break from the NSCSO team. 

Best regards

Kari

Kari Manovitch
Service Lead, New Support and Customer Service Organisation project, Commercial Service

London Borough of Barnet, North London Business Park, Oakleigh Road South, London N11 1NP
Tel: 020 8359 7628 
Mobile: 07940 913251 (feel free to phone her with any pressing questions about OneBarnet tendering of Customer Services)

So 40 staff are sitting around shuffling paperwork, drinking tea, reading 30,000 word essays at 200wpm = 2.5hours ( what else will they do between 6 December and 28 February ! ) going on the biggest Xmas party that you have ever seen? ( surely Trowers & Hamlins will have forked out for a champagne fuelled extravaganza? any photographs of Assistant Directors the worse for wear would be lovely - please send them to mrmustard@zoho.com  )  and Customer Services itself isn't being left to rot is it? Oh yes it is. Take a look at the Chief Executive's performance report for July to September; it is dismal, especially when it comes to answering the telephone.

See page 4 in particular.

Barnet Council Chief Executive's Service Q2 2011-12

If those 40 people had been in the office answering 50 phone calls a day each then an extra 130,000 phone calls could have been answered ( 50 calls * 40 people * 65 days in 13 weeks) and performance could have been 100% of calls answered within 5 rings or 20 seconds. Now wouldn't that have been more useful?

This contract is going to last for 10 years. What is Kari Manovitch's view on service review? Have a look on page 8
Prototyping Learning - NESTA

So here are her words:

“...it can be difficult to get improvement right the first time...
there’s nothing like doing it to know whether it’s going to work.”


This customer service contract will be signed for 10 years. Let us hope that Barnet Council do get it right first time. 

Do you think they will ? The comment box is below.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

1 comment:

  1. The chances of them getting it right are about the same as Brian Coleman being seen in Essex Park, gritting the pavement.

    ReplyDelete

I now moderate comments in the light of the Delfi case. Due to the current high incidence of spam I have had to turn word verification on.