The average call to Dacorum Council takes more than five minutes to get through

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Answering an old style telephone PPP-180727-103518006 — jpns 280718 p20 lady answering antique phone gv 1 Answering an old style telephone PPP-180727-103518006

Between April and June this year, 28,174 calls were made to the council’s customer  contact centre.

But one in every eight callers – or 3,528 people – gave up before their calls were  answered.

And that is an improvement on the same three-month period last year, when 5,229 –or 17.26 per cent – of the 30,298 calls were abandoned.

The data will be presented to councillors on Wednesday (September 4).

It also shows that callers are having to wait an average of 314 seconds – more than five minutes – before their call to the council is answered.

That is an improvement on the 332-second wait recorded over the same period last year.

But it falls short of the council’s target of answering calls within five minutes.

The report to councillors says newer members of staff are being trained to “become multi-skilled”, which will  enable the 300-second target to be met.

Previously the target for answering calls was set at 210 seconds.

Overall the data shows that 99.7 per cent of customers are satisfied with the service they received from the customer  service unit. That’s based on the responses of 2,536  customers.

It also shows that face-to-face customers wait an  average of 195 seconds – that’s just over three minutes – before  being dealt with by the  customer services team.

That’s quicker than the  average for the same period last year, which was 247  seconds. And it is well within  the council target of 450  seconds.