Out of hours call handling can be an essential, but costly service for authorities. However, by sharing services, boroughs can not only make substantial savings but deliver a more effective customer service.
Last year, three London boroughs signed a framework agreement with Vangent to enable the information management firm to deliver a 'shared service' operation managing their out of hours calls.
The aim of outsourcing this service was to reduce costs and improve efficiencies by working collaboratively; by foregoing the need to have separate call handling functions in each participating borough, the service is anticipated to have reduced costs to around one third of the in-house handling level.
Ealing is the lead client for the operation and was the first authority to implement the service. A further five organisations have now signed up: Barking and Dagenham, Waltham Forest, Tower Hamlets, Haringey and housing body, Homes for Haringey.
Answering calls during evenings, weekends and public holidays, customer service agents working for Vangent are trained to determine the nature of a call and are then able to use a tailored management system to help them respond to the query.
Using scripts for common enquiries
This system enables agents to follow scripts for responding to particular enquiries and generate actions. For example, for a social services enquiry, the agent may be directed to call the duty social worker about the issue in hand.
If the nature of the call doesn't tally with any of the scripts, customers are advised to call back during working hours – though with the positive experience of having previously spoken to a real person about their issue.
Michelle Bernard, project and contract monitoring manager at Ealing, believes this script system is crucial to delivering an effective service and challenging the views of those who believe outsourcing is detrimental to the quality of customer service.
"If the scripts are right, if the flow charts are right, then there's no room for error," she says.
"We're not compromising on our service – a lot of people might feel if it's outsourced the service would not be the same. But if anything we've made it more efficient. We're monitoring the service – all the calls are recorded, the call abandonment rate is next to nothing and, crucially, we've not had any complaints about the service."
Cost savings
And the potential for making savings and delivering value for money is substantial.
In Ealing, the original in-house out of hours service employed a minimum of eight staff to cover calls 24-hour a day, 365 days a year - but because staff tended to answer very few calls at certain times of the night, the service was not cost effective.
Ms Bernard estimates that Ealing has saved around £145,000 per year by outsourcing the service. And she says working collaboratively with other councils has not only helped cut costs, but has helped improve service delivery.
"Relationship-building has been beneficial. If we learn about new ways to deliver services we take that back to our back offices – we share knowledge with one another. It's been very productive in that sense."
The framework agreement that has been drawn up with Vangent is now available not just to other local authorities across London but to other government institutions and non-governmental institutions such as housing associations.
Ms Bernard is keen to see more organisations sign up. As she points out, the higher the numbers, the greater the scope for reducing the contract charges.
Additional information can be found on the project's webpages
