Data reveals how long it takes to answer calls to Hertfordshire County Council
Most calls to Hertfordshire County Council are being answered in less than a minute, according to newly-published data.
The authority’s latest performance report shows that in the first three months of this year, 89,700 calls were made to the customer service centre, 94% of which were answered.
Callers waited an average of 53 seconds to be answered. The monthly averages were 48 seconds in January, 52 in February and 57 in March, with 75%, 72% and 71% of calls respectively answered within a minute.
That’s better than the council’s target of answering 70% of calls within a minute. And, says the report, it is in line with other councils and “better than many”.
The 53-second average wait is 10 seconds quicker than the 63 seconds recorded over the previous quarter, October to December (2024) – and significantly quicker than April to June last year, when callers had to wait more than three minutes on average.
The county council put those delays down to “considerable teething issues” with a new telephony and customer relationship management system.
A spokesperson for the council said: “Call times in the first quarter of 2024 were not answered as quickly as we would have hoped as new software was implemented.
“But we’re really pleased that those initial teething problems were resolved quickly and since then we answer calls to us in under 60 seconds.”