I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue

Mr Mustard is a big fan of this Radio 4 programme, especially of Samantha who doesn't exist, and there is an empty chair for her whenever the programme is recorded in halls around the country. She always gets a big cheer. Barnet Council customer services decided to play the game recently and clearly haven't got a clue.

There are lots more clips where that one came from and hopefully you remembered what you were doing and are back with Mr Mustard now.

Not having owned a TV for some years when Mr Mustard made up the name of his mystery shopper from Birmingham he chose the surname Jones for Samantha, that being a fairly common name, and didn't remember that she is a character in Sex in the City. Mr Mustard had sex on the blog last week, moving swiftly on....

Here is what "Samantha" sent in to first.contact@barnet.gov.uk

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8 October 2012

Dear Sir or Madam

I am visiting East Finchley next week. I don't carry a mobile phone and I have checked on the Barnet Council website and see that I can buy a voucher in a local shop to pay for my parking.

Please could you send me a list of the shops in East Finchley where I can buy one of the 1 hour vouchers.

Yours faithfully

Samantha Jones

92 Torrey Grove

Birmingham

B8 3RR

(the road exists but not this number)

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9 October 2012

Dear Samantha Jones,

Please accept this reply as confirmation that I have received your email.

I will investigate the contents of your email and provide you a full response within ten working days.

Kind regards

Parking Services

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Samantha sat at home in Birmingham planning her trip which was going to take place by 20th October at the latest and wondered if she would get the vital information in time.

On 2 November she could wait no longer. A fat lot of use customer services had been to an out-of-town visitor up until now. This pay-by-phone or voucher parking system really must be putting people off of visiting Barnet.

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2 November

Dear Mr Parking

I have had some trouble with my inbox and so hope I didn't miss your message. I also had to postpone my trip and am now going to East Finchley at the end of the month so it would help me to know which shop I have to go to to get a voucher.

Thank you so much

Samantha

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The reply came a little more quickly this time although it wasn't of any use.

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5 November

Dear Samantha Jones,

I can confirm that the following webpage contains all information. I am afraid we do not keep a list of individual businesses which stock the parking vouchers. I can, however, confirm that all Barnet libraries sell them.

Kind regards

Parking Services

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The webpage address was not included in the email. Not having a list of stockists of parking vouchers by shop for each CPZ zone strikes Mr Mustard as a failure to have even the most basic information available. Vouchers are not the answer to the missing parking meters. So Samantha wrote again.

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7 November 2012

Dear Mr Parking

Thank you for your reply. Is it me or have you not put the details of the webpage with all the information?

I could go to the library. My appointment is at 9am. Is the library open at that time? Where is it? Can I park there without getting a parking ticket? I now expect to stay from 9am to 1pm. How much will that cost please?

I am sorry to keep troubling you but I really hate to get parking tickets as I do not have any spare money and so always have to check before I go anywhere about what is correct.

Thank you so much.

Samantha

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This time Samantha received a reply on the same day, and she has undergone a sex change since she last wrote:

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7 November

Dear Mr Jones,

My apologies, I did not put the website address in the email.

I can confirm that page is http://www.barnet.gov.uk/info/930112/cashless_parking_and_parking_vouchers/714/cashless_parking_and_parking_vouchers.

All of the information you seek is available on this page.

Information on libraries can be found at http://www.barnet.gov.uk/info/437/libraries.

Kind regards

Parking Services

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Is it just Mr Mustard or do you all think that absolutely no service has been provided at all. The information provided was slow, pauce and not likely to attract visitors to Barnet. Samantha knew the library did not open until 9.30am which was why she chose a 9am appointment to see what advice or assistance she would receive. None at all is the answer. The phoneless Samantha has a problem unless she can find a shop that sells vouchers before she gets a parking ticket. At the library there is only one parking space which is reserved for the disabled so that she cannot use as she does not have a blue badge.

Samantha is going to retire from the mystery shopping market now. Watch out at first.contact as she will reappear in a new guise one day.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Wave goodbye to service

Customer Services Transformation moves up a gear

Monday, 23 July 2012 14:20 Schroder, Johnathan 

Over the past couple of months, our Customer Service Transformation (CST) project team has been busy planning the transfer of a number of services into the Customer Service Organisation (CSO). The services are transferring over three waves running through till October 2012 and the majority of the services included in the first wave have been successfully implemented this week.Are they now waving or drowning?

The planning has been made more complex by the requirement that business as usual should not be negatively affected during the transfer. Really? but it has been. Call handling in CSO for Revs & Bens has gone from awesome to abysmal according to anonymous, from 85% answered to 15% of calls answered.

As a result, the CSO has successfully transferred call and email contact handling for Registrars, Youth Services and most recently the Revenues and Benefits service. The final stages of transferring Education Welfare contacts are currently underway and this is imminent. This equates to approximately 26 staff and team leaders joining the CSO. Poor sods.

This is a significant achievement, and the single biggest critical success factor has been the professional, enthusiastic and collaborative working between the CSO and the services themselves. Both groups of stakeholders are passionate about their service and wanted this transfer to work and have pulled out the stops. What a pity we couldn't press the stop button instead.

The ‘go live’ was planned around taking small pragmatic steps, using tried and tested methods, diligent review of the existing services, recruiting customer-focused staff, testing and training and the development of various systems and processes. The majority of the services transferred did not include staff transfers so it was even more important to get this part of the planning right. So now we have left all that knowledge behind in the services. Presumably, the services themselves are now over-staffed and will make loads of redundancies and knowledge will waft out of the front gate.

From an IS perspective, complex call and email routing rules had to be designed and put in place to effect the seamless migration of contacts from existing sites and teams into the CSO at NLBP. IS = Information Systems? Oh no, complexity. That leads to cock-ups. Systems so complicated that once the person who designed them leaves no-one knows how to change them. If the services had been left to handle their own customer service enquiries none of these complex routines would be needed.

During the actual ‘go live’, the CSO was able to call on colleagues from within the services themselves to help support the launch by providing floor walkers and subject experts ‘on the floor’ to provide assurance, feedback and knowledge over the early days of the transfer. Staff had been recruited with enough time to allow them to receive comprehensive training which was jointly designed and delivered. A safety net had to be employed as the new people didn't, of course, know enough or have enough experience. Comprehensive training won't replace 10 years experience.

The innovative training programme also included sending CSO staff to the services’ place of work to allow them to experience, first hand, a typical ‘day in the life of’ the services. CSO staff could therefore empathise with both the customers of the service, the nature of their queries and the service itself. CSO managers also presented to the services their vision of how the service would work at team meetings and during consultation.

To support the successful launch and to provide a sustainable service, the team also developed a new knowledge management system that provides prompting and scripting for staff. This knowledge base is so comprehensive that much of the content within it is to be utilised by the services on Barnet’s re-launched website. The CSO staff are also providing feedback to the webmasters on appropriateness of content and encouraging customers to visit the new website to support their information and service needs. Oh no. A computer system which tells you what to say. Scripts are just awful. Many callers don't know the script and so don't get the answer. Square peg / round hole. Also trying to make the customer do the work themselves. Hang on, you are customer service, service, service, service, service (do you get it?)

For Revenues and Benefits, the complexity of the transfer was compounded by the fact that staff were transferred into the CSO after a statutory consultation period. The professional staff that joined the CSO received comprehensive training in customer service skills and during a period of unprecedented change successfully went live on 11 July. Again, a Herculean effort involving staff from the retained services, IS and the CSO project team meant that ‘go live’ happened with very little incident. Why does Mr Mustard think that professional staff already had customer service skills? Perhaps Bill would like to share with us on the intranet the number of pieces of work in arrears on 11 July 2011 last year and the number now. Mr Mustard already knows that the recent number is much greater than the one for last year. Facts never seem to make it into these messages.

Historical note: Hercules had the help of Hermes and Athena, sympathetic deities who showed up when he really needed help. Who is going to help CSO later?

A big thank you goes out to all the teams both within the services affected as well as the project teams from within the CSO and IS that worked tirelessly to make the 'Wave 1' launches a resounding success. Wave service goodbye.

Bill Murphy, the Assistant Director for Customer Services, said: "This is a really significant milestone. I feel proud that we have achieved this and things are going so well." Oh, no.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

When sorry seems to be the hardest word

So the video (Mr Mustard is very grateful to Dan at the Barnet Bugle)  above is of the Audit Committee on 21 June and 5 minutes into the recording Bill Murphy is heard to clearly say ( well what passes as clearly for mumbler Bill ) that people can "come into" ( i.e. telephone ) customer services to "challenge their penalty notice"

Now Mr Mustard knew that this was complete and utter nonsense and as Bill obviously didn't know the answer he should have said so, as he had done to an earlier question. Maybe though he didn't want to appear to be so ignorant of the workings of his own department. If could of course have been a new policy of the "better service for less money" kind, or "putting the community first" but are only empty phrases. Thus on Saturday 23 June Mr Mustard sent Bill "Bullshit" Murphy an email:

Dear Mr Murphy

At the Audit Committee on Thursday evening chaired by Cllr Lord Monroe Palmer ("Monroe") you answered a short series of questions about scanning and parking documents in general.

When Monroe enquired about other outsourced parking services you told him that people can still call customer services to challenge a parking ticket/PCN and that this was going to be outsourced. The website at this page does not inform the public that they can challenge parking tickets by calling customer services at the council and it would be most informative if it did.

I have sent a copy of this email to the other Mr Palmer as I believe he is in overall charge of the website.

He received a holding reply the same day (no Dear Sir / Yours etc - this is the entire message )

Thanks. I will look into it. Have a good weekend.

and then on 5 July this


Dear Mr Mustard,

I am sorry I did not get back o (sic) you last week but I'm afraid I was not available. In answer to your question:-

Residents can appeal or query a PCN by writing to the following address:

Barnet Parking Service
PO Box 4894
Worthing
BN11 9WT 

Mr Mustard knew this.

They can also appeal against a PCN online via the following page on our website:

http://www.barnet.gov.uk/info/930111/parking_tickets_pcn/516/parking_tickets_pcn
and this

or via the link below:

https://live.esd.ce.civicahosting.co.uk/barnet/Notices/ChallengePcn.aspx
and this

Quite a few people do phone in on 0208 359 7446 - where we then advise them of the process for appealing (so there is demand for a telephone based appeal service about which you will probably do nothing). So you are technically right that we do not actually process the appeal by phone - but we do provide advise on how to appeal. No you don't - you provide advice. Mr Mustard's bold emphasis.

I hope this is helpful.

Bill Murphy
Assistant Director, Customer Services

As an aside those web page addresses, known as URL, Uniform Resource Locator, are far too long. They appear in the Notice to Owner and people are expected to copy them into their browser one character at a time. Barnet Council says they are customer centric. If you were customer centric you would provide a short URL (permanent ones are available) like this one http://v.gd/ourbarnet which is a link to the last blog that Mr Mustard wrote. Come on, Barnet Council, wake up and get with the programme.

Now let us consider Bill's mealy mouthed reply ("technically correct" my foot). He said that one could appeal a ticket by phoning in and then he lists the ways that appeals can actually take place which do not include phoning in. You were wrong Bill and you have mislead the committee. Your reply is below the standard that one would expect of an Assistant Director who we have to pay £570 for, every single day that you work, to Hays HR.

You should look in the mirror and ask yourself. Is the council tax payer getting good value for his £570? Mr Mustard would say not.

Ask yourself if you know enough about Customer Services to be in charge of it and making massive organisational change? No, again Mr Mustard would suggest.

Mr Mustard does hope that you have written to the committee to apologise to them for having given them the wrong answer as, if not, you should already be getting your coat and leaving Barnet.

Remember for future meetings that a public gallery full of bloggers might well know more than you do so before bull-shitting again, stop and consider your words carefully. We don't want another episode like this one, now do we? 

(You might need to practice giving straight and accurate answers as there is always the chance that you will get called for a grilling about "town hall tax dodgers" by the Public Accounts Committee. I can't see the rapier-like Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP letting you off with any nonsense answers)

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Right first time - a fine theory

Look out for the launch of the customer care standards

Monday, 02 July 2012 15:23 Schroder, Johnathan

Over the past few months you will have seen posters and desktop messages about how all staff are expected to ‘think customer’ in their day to day jobs, and today sees the launch of the refreshed customer care standards which will provide the next level of detail. This morning, every work station had a booklet and business card placed on it setting out the council’s expectations related to customer service. This should provide a model for the work every member of staff does – whether liaising with our customers by email, post, phone, face to face and increasingly, we hope, via the new website. There are new guidelines for home visits and 'out and about' which will provide new guidance for some of our staff and contracted partners. (That would be "workstation" then.)

Throughout the council, the customer is continuing to be placed at the centre of everything we do. Work continues in every service to make them more customer-centric prior to the introduction of the ‘New Customer Service Organisation’ in 2013 through a partnership with either BT or Capita. Placed at the centre of everything we do which is why 99% of them have never heard of "One Barnet".

The literature also sets out new expectations when handling member enquiries and complaints.

Monika Singh, Head of Customer Service Transformation, said:

“Step by step, we are introducing changes that will make a real difference to our customers, and demonstrate that the council is ‘thinking customer’ in everything it does from the start of a customer transaction, all the way through to the end when the service has been provided. Its not just about how quickly we pick up the phone or see someone any more (although of course that still matters), but also how we speak to customers and how well we actually deliver on any promises we make. It's "it's" not "its" you illiterate. ("close quotes were missing from this section)

“The customer care standards are there to provide a framework and clear guidance for all our staff about what is expected when they serve Barnet Council's residents and other customers. We want our customers to get a consistently excellent service every time they contact us, and from whoever they choose to contact. I hope everyone finds the time to read them and consider how they can be put into practice in their day-to-day jobs.” 

Mr Mustard knows a lot of staff at Barnet Council. They feel insulted by this booklet full of baloney. They already know how to give good customer service and how to speak to customers. Surely it would have been better to take the small percentage of staff whose skills could be improved upon and give one-to-one training to them. Isn't that the job of their line managers?

Stand by in FOI. There is an incoming question about the cost of this rubbish. The answer was £876

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

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.

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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 )

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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)

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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

Customer Support - From 7 to 4 -- then to 1 or to zero ?

With a long-term contract worth £750million up for grabs one can expect a bit of interest as there is money to be made. Barnet doesn't seem to be universally popular though as some potential suppliers have walked away.

Staff were sent this email:

"We’ve now finished our first round of dialogue meetings and the whole dialogue team is enthused about the energy and commitment that bidders have put into the process so far.  If Mr Mustard was heading the bidding team for a contract worth £750m he would be enthused beyond belief at the prospect of a £1m bonus for bringing in the work.

Round two begins next week and will focus on financial and commercial issues. No mention of what round one focused on.

The first round of due diligence meetings also finished this week. That will probably be due diligence by providers on Barnet and could be why some left as they don't like cans of worms?

At these meetings, bidders asked James Wills-Fleming ( anyone heard of him? ) detailed questions about how the corporate programmes function is structured and run. So that they could work out how much fat they could find to chop and how much scope there is to change your terms and conditions of service.

As mentioned previously, seven bidders were invited to participate in the dialogue process. We now have four bidders because three - Avarto UK, CSC Computer Sciences UK and IBM - withdrew prior to their first meeting. The three wise men left.

The four we met with this week are BT, Capita, HCL Axon consortium and Serco. Mr Mustard shuddered when he read 3 of these names. Hand control to faceless corporations. And the fourth, HCL Axon seem to focus on SAP which we have had enough of already.

While the withdrawal of any bidder is regrettable, it is common in competitive dialogue. Bidders search out the easiest and most profitable contracts with the best organised partners. Mr Mustard thinks that there are more efficient local authorities to work with.

Their decisions were strongly influenced by the amount of time, commitment and resource that companies have to commit to the competitive dialogue process, and other competing commercial opportunities. Barnet Council admit that outsourcers are looking to maximise profit - which is at the expense of residents & employees.

Each of the three companies gave the council positive feedback about the way we have run the process." The bidders were careful to be nice to us, whether they meant it or not, as we have a lot more contracts to put on the table which they might want a share of.

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Mr Mustard had a quick look on the internet to find out how well these companies had been doing with their outsourcing. Nothing that he found would make him want to sign a contract with any of them.

Serco 1
Serco 2
Serco 3
Serco 4
Serco 5

BT 1
BT 2
BT 3

Capita 1
Capita 2
Capita 3
Capita 4

And of course you read Private Eye and find loads of articles about outsourcing going wrong in the Rotten Boroughs column.

There are no links to articles about HCL Axon because all that could be found were some references to their work on SAP with Tfl, Birmingham CC & York CC. Do they have the ability to run the proposed contract?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Customer Services - Output specificaton

The New Support & Customer Services project is the grandly titled idea to contract out many of the first contacts with the council which will mean that they lose touch with why we are ringing. Mr Mustard thinks this is a completely stupid idea as you actually need to hear first hand what your customers think of you - even if you don't like the answer, and the message won't get lost.

There is the famous story of the British Army Commander who sent the message "Send reinforcements, we're going to advance." back to the Command Center, through a long chain of subordinates. When the message finally reached the Command Center, it had mutated to become -

"Send three and four-pence, we're going to a dance."

The reinforcements never arrived.

Here are the output specifications or some such tripe for customer services. You might want to skip straight to the end of this blog if you don't want to get bogged down in ludicrous detail; remember though that you are paying for this, probably handsomely to a consultant.

You might also like to think about going to the end of the blog and clicking the pdf/print button and printing this one out to make it easier to read.

click to enlarge; back to return

The above hogwash contains the line "substantially improved customer and resident experience of dealing with the council" at the same time as planning to outsource to some huge company. Will a Barnet resident have any experience of Barnet Council if they are put through to some call centre in Outer Mongolia or wherever it might happen to be? - no they won't. They will have an experience of the outsourcer. Will this save time or money? no, it won't. 

On page 6 it says "enable customers to resolve issues through a single point of contact within customer services" which is to totally misunderstand what residents ( customers, grr ) want. They want to ring someone who can fix their problem there and then whether it be housing benefit, adoption, council tax, litter, noise abatement, a parking fine, electoral role, a death etc etc and not speak to a call centre who won't know diddly squat.

Page 6 has another "design principle" which is "enable customers to only have to provide information once, which can be used to provide a range of related services" which worries Mr Mustard greatly that his data will be provided to every department and every contractor who deals with the council.

The final principle is to "provide a coherent brand, identity and ethos for customer services that builds a new relationship with the citizens of Barnet". People probably have enough relationship problems already without wanting one with their local council, or councillor; any takers for Cllr Coleman?; no, I thought not. Residents just want their bins emptied on time, no ethos; no brand, just a reasonable service, that is all.

4.2.3 - The partner will be responsible for all channels, except post ( Mr Mustard's emphasis ). So to defeat this stupid outsourcing we just have to go back to writing letters to the North London Business Park instead of phoning or emailing - and we keep the Royal Mail going at the same time.

Page 7 says that the provider will not deal with post fulfillment or scanning but customers' postal correspondence with other service providers should be visible to CSOI staff. Well that will depend won't it on what it is about. If it is about your care package then it shouldn't and if you mark your correspondence "Private & Confidential" then that shouldn't be scanned and available to anyone who can log into the computer. 

Page 7 envisages that "specialist teams handle more specialist enquiries grouped around customer type and episodes ( i.e. street based services, adults, businesses etc )". So if you ask anything even slightly difficult you will be passed on to a specialist team. Will you be kept holding on, yes if you can even get through. 

Ooh look even the specialists are planned not to cope "where enquiries cannot be dealt with, an automatic handover to the correct team" whoever that might be.

Looking at page 10 it is interesting to note that simple emails ( define?) will be answered by the outsourcer ( Mr Mustard wonders about his FOI requests which are simple ) but that the rest will be forwarded to services. Who is going to monitor that a reply is sent ? Will this 2 step dance make the council more efficient? No. 

Even the highest level complaints, the stage 3 complaints are going to be outsourced. The outsourcer won't have any idea how to reply. This is an idiotic idea.

On page 17 there is a key performance indicator (KPI). 75% of calls are to be answered within 20 seconds. That is so lax. 100% of calls should be answered within 5 rings would be a target worth aiming at. 

KPI - less than 10% abandoned calls. No, go for 0% abandoned calls.

KPI 85% of emails answered within 10 days - no, 99% of emails answered within 10 days would be a worthwhile target.

KPI 80% of Corporate Complaints responded to within SLA ( Service Level Agreement ) What is the point of having an SLA that is so pitifully feeble. Complaints nipped in the bud on day 1 stop you appearing in blogs. Jump to it. Richard Grice's name is on this specification - has he ever worked in industry? - he can't have. He is planning for failure. 

Page 22 - The average waiting time has been 1.57 minutes and so once privatised people can be instead kept waiting for an average of 10 minutes. A worse experience. Putting the customer last.

Page 25 - GovMetric. the council has procured GovMetric to deliver... The Partner shall provide this or a similar tool. Now the council spent good money on GovMetric in April 2011 ( DPR 1301 ) and yet it isn't going to be implemented until September 2011 and even then if the provider wants to use something else they can, which we have to pay for and throw in the bin the time & money invested in GovMetric.

Page 26 - Complex enquiries should be forwarded to Service Areas to investigate and respond to. Why does Mr Mustard get the feeling that the provider and the service areas are going to spend time arguing about what is complex and what isn't in order to avoid work or make money.

Page 27 - Customer Insight is underdeveloped and will be outsourced - goodbye Mr Markey? & his two assistants? This startling admission hasn't stopped Barnet Council from deciding to outsource pretty much everything at the same time as they don't know what customers want from the Council. Why does Mr Mustard think that any Insight produced by the provider in the future will somehow include that outsourcing is the best thing since sliced bread ( which is an abomination - use your local baker if you want to keep him ).

Page 29 - We will provide: A range of ways for you to access the service you need, in a way that is most convenient to you. Mr Mustard would like to pay for parking in case. What, he can't. Not convenient to the Council who come before you the citizen.

Page 34 - contains some shocking figures. 12% of all calls to the switchboard are abandoned. Why not simply put more people on the end of the telephone? Too simple for Barnet Council. They will need a £50,000 consultant's report to tell them what to do.
17% of all calls abandoned. Forget OneBarnet - just answer the phone and then satisfaction ratings will improve. It's so simple. Now that would be easy Council.

Finally I see from the appendix on page 36 that Engagement is going to take place on the new website, once it eventually plods up sometime in 2012, by dint of the following:

Discussions Forums ( don't put Cllr Gordon in charge of those as he prefers to subdue individuals rather than listen )
Facebook ( the page that Mrs Angry was barred from for 2 months perhaps - you can't engage if you can't access something )
Blogs - ooh competition - any blog issued by the council will simply be full of puff and any criticism will be moderated out of existence. The Famous Five Barnet Bloggers will be needed more than ever.

Sorry about the length of this posting - do print it out, it will make for easier reading.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard