One in four calls to Hertfordshire County Council were abandoned, new findings show
Callers to Hertfordshire County Council were hanging on the telephone – following the introduction of a new telephony system.
Between April and June calls to the county council were taking an average of 199 seconds – or three minutes and 19 seconds – to be answered.
And, in that three-month period, one in four of the 102,000 calls made were abandoned.
The delays – which are due to be highlighted at a meeting of the council’s cabinet on Monday (14 October) – have been put down to a new telephony and customer relationship management system.
And according to a report published in advance of the meeting, there were “considerable teething issues” with the service.
According to the detailed data in the report, the average wait time for callers peaked in April at 262 seconds – or four minutes and 22 seconds.
In May it dropped to an average of 187 seconds – and in June it dropped further to 155 seconds.
“Performance in the period was materially impacted by the scale of changes introduced from Apr2024 with the implementation of a new contract & the introduction of a new telephony & CRM system,” says the report.
“There were considerable teething issues with the service, nevertheless, experiencing month by month improvements.”
Although data for the following months has not yet been published, the report suggests that the performance in July was “more positive”.
And a spokesperson for the county council has told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that in the three-month period between July and September the average wait time was 60 seconds.
“As new software was rolled out to our customer services team, for a short period of time we saw waiting times for calls to be answered take longer than usual,” said the spokesperson for the county council.
“We apologise to those who experienced longer than normal for their calls to be answered during this time.
“Latest data shows that the situation has drastically improved since the end of the first quarter and on average, the wait time before a call is answered was sixty seconds across July to September.“
According to the cabinet report, the county council target is for 70 per cent of calls to be answered within one minute.
The report says that 30 per cent of calls met this target in April, 36 per cent in May and 45 per cent in June.