Agenda item
YOUR VOICE REPORT - Q3 2016/2017
To consider a report (copy attached) on the Council’s performance in dealing with complaints under its corporate complaints process. The report also includes information on the method used for collecting customer feedback, collating it into a Customer Effort Dashboard, which is then used to inform future service improvements.
10.30 a.m. – 11.15 a.m.
Minutes:
The Interim Principal Manager, Support Services and the
Statutory and Corporate Complaints Officer, introduced the report (previously
circulated) to provide an overview of compliments, suggestions and complaints
received by Denbighshire County Council under the council’s Customer Feedback
Policy “Your Voice” during Q3 2016/17.
The report also included Social Services complaints procedure.
During their
introduction they advised that the report included information on the number of
complaints received in relation to commissioned services as well as services
delivered directly by the Council itself. Of the number of complaints
received in relation to the Planning and Public Protection Service, 50% were in
respect of services delivered on its behalf by Kingdom Security. Members
acknowledged that the types of services delivered by Kingdom Security, which
were enforcement services on the Council’s behalf, were by their very nature
likely to generate a greater number of complaints. Footage from the Enforcement
Officer’s body camera was useful evidence when determining complaints against
Kingdom.
Responding to
members’ questions officers advised that:
·
at present the customer feedback process had no
mechanism built into it to record the severity of complaints. However,
the progression of a complaint to the Stage 2 process could sometimes indicate
either the complexity or severity of the complaint;
·
the customer feedback policy did not record if any
compensation payments had been made to complainants. The Statutory and
Corporate Complaints Officer undertook to establish whether data on annual compensation
payments were reported to any specific committee or published in a
specific location;
·
they would follow-up the Committee’s concerns with
respect to Children and Family Services performance in dealing with Stage
1 complaints within the set timescales. Whilst the Committee acknowledged
that this Service dealt with extremely sensitive and complex matters, they were
concerned that they had consistently underperformed against the set target
throughout the 2016/17 year;
·
with respect to councillor attendance at meetings, the
Head of Legal, HR and Democratic Services had been tasked to draw up some
proposals for Group Leaders’ consideration on what the Council expected from
members, including member attendance at meetings. It was suggested that
Performance Scrutiny Committee may in future want to monitor member attendance
at Council meetings;
·
as officers they would like to revisit the
reporting framework relating to complaints with a view to including more
valuable data i.e. the number of complaints upheld or partially upheld and the
grounds which led to the determinations. They felt that this approach
would be beneficial to the authority by aiding services to learn from
complaints; and
·
the ‘Excellence Denbighshire Awards’ would have a
new award category this year, for a resident whose complaint had resulted in
service improvements.
Attached as
Appendix 2 to the report was a supplementary report on the ‘Customer Effort
Dashboard’. The Head of Customers, Communication and Marketing introduced
this report which outlined how customer feedback collated by the Council was
fed into a Customer Effort Dashboard in order to provide real time information
about the customer experience for the purpose of improving future service
provision. She advised that the results received from the company
administering the dashboard service was extremely encouraging, as it was
illustrating that the Council was performing well in comparison to other public
sector service providers. It was extremely pleasing to report that customers
who had contacted Denbighshire Customer Services Centre were willing to respond
with additional written comments on the service they had received, rather than
confine themselves to the score requested for each question. Officers
were of the view that the data received to date from Ember, the company that
operated the Dashboard facility, was so useful that it would be worthwhile to
approach the Modernisation Board with a request for funding for a further 12
months.
Responding to
members’ questions the Head of Service advised:
·
the
Council could explore the potential of delivering a similar Dashboard service
to that provided by Ember, however that service would not have the benefits of
providing comparable data across both the public and private sectors;
·
that
the surveys were conducted bilingually; and
·
the call handling times for callers who requested
to speak to a Welsh speaker were on a par with those who opted for an English
language service.
At the conclusion
of the discussion the Committee:
RESOLVED that
subject to the above observations:
(i)
to receive the report on the Council’s performance in dealing with
customer feedback in line with its ‘Your Voice’ policy and that future quarterly
reports include information on complaints which are upheld and partially upheld
along with the lessons learnt in those cases; and
(ii)
to receive the information on the Customer Effort Dashboard and request
that a further performance report in relation to the Dashboard data be
presented to members in twelve months’ time.
Supporting documents:
- Your Voice Report Q3 2016-17 160317, item 6. PDF 100 KB
- Your Voice Q3 2016-17 Appendix 1, item 6. PDF 448 KB
- Your Voice - Appendix 2 Dashboard Report 160317, item 6. PDF 746 KB