NI 14 - Reducing the cost of avoidable contact
National Indicator 14 is
one of 198 indicators against which local government will be assessed
within its new performance management network set up to improve customer
service and reduce costs.
The indicator aims to reduce avoidable contact between local authorities and their communities - or more precisely those calls which are of little value to either the citizen or local authority, such as repeated calls to chase progress on service requests. A number of pilots are already operating around the country, and they're paying dividends, with many councils already seeing reductions in avoidable contact.
A big, hot topic
NI 14 represents a different way of thinking about the demand that local
government frontline staff receive. It has implications that cut across
both public and private sector organisations that cater for people at
every level of service - from contact centres to retail.
What NI 14 means for your business
If for example, of every 100 calls an organisation receives it actually
only needs 20 of them. Those 20 callers can be organised and received in
a number of different ways - by having better technology and smarter
processes. But fundamentally it's about people giving people the
information - so they're not confused, they know how a call has got to
be closed, and the right expectation set in the mind of those 20
callers.
So if you phone up your local authority to get your rubbish collected, but don't hear anything back, you pick up the phone again to find out what's going on. In NI 14 the government has recognised the importance of getting rid of the second or third calls that annoy the consumer and at the same time has the call centre handling calls it doesn't need to be dealing with - it's a waste of time for everybody. It's mainly due to people not giving the right information and not having the right tools in front of them.
It's a big, hot topic. We believe that the key to avoidable contact is about getting your people to have the right conversations with your customers, communities and citizens. This means they must have proactive contact management.
If your frontline teams are inundated with calls from the same customers chasing up the same service, your organisation needs to go through some kind of service transformation - and we should be talking.
If you want to reduce the cost of avoidable contact, while improving the quality of your training delivery, call Kellie on 0845 230 8500 or email Kelliel@calcomgroup.com.