Somerset Council is deliberately leaving people on hold

Somerset Council officially replaced the county council and four district councils in April 2023, with the new authority inheriting all the existing councils’ services – including its customer services team which deal directly with local residents.

Councillor Gill Slocombe, a long-serving Conservative councillor in Bridgwater, complained at a recent meeting that customer service had “gone out of the window” and said the council was not doing enough to meet the needs of people without mobile phones or internet access.

The council admitted that some callers were being kept on hold longer to encourage them to report problems via its website – such as missed bin collections.

However, it also stated that more than 80 per cent of customer calls were solved at the first point of contact and around 85 per cent of callers said they were satisfied with the existing service.

Ms Slocombe (who represents the Bridgwater West division), made her comments ahead of a full council meeting held in Bridgwater on September 26.

She said: “To be a councillor you need to care about people, want to help, want to make a change and direct them to the best possible route.

“Up until this time I have always felt that I have managed to achieve this, but now since the new unitary I feel as lost as many of our electorate.

“Customer service seems to have gone out of the window, if you want to speak to someone it’s almost impossible.

“When you ring the outside number you are reminded that if you wish to go online it will be quicker and more efficient – really?

“When did we stop caring enough to want everyone to be digitally connected?

“Some people actually want to speak to a human being, someone they can explain their personal issue to, someone who will listen, perhaps when they cannot connect to us as councillors.

“The expectation in this council is that we all have mobiles, so when we are told to hold on, we can do so because we all have so much time on our hands.

“[The expectation is] it’s absolutely fine to keep people hanging on for more than 20 minutes. This I believe is done so the person will eventually find the means to go online with the help of someone else.”

Since ‘vesting day’ (April 1, 2023), the council’s switchboard has received 686,388 calls from members of the public – with the average handling time (the length of conversation once a call is answered) being 12 minutes.

Ms Slocombe warned that the council could potentially be in breach of the Equality Act 2010, and urged both councillors and officers to create “a caring council” to ensure people’s concerns were taken seriously.

She said: “I ask this council to remember the inclusivity of each of us, to remember that not all of our customers want a mobile, iPad or computer.

“In our communities many of our electorate just want to speak to someone to
explain their problem, directly – be it a personal financial issue, or that once again their bin has not been collected, or even just to tell you that the pothole outside of their house has now reached to Australia.

“They want to be independent and feel they are being heard, so they continually try to find something that is called customer service.

“Please let us not become so big that we have forgotten the people that pay their rates, elect their councillors, the people that pay the council’s wages, the people that matter.

“Let’s become a caring council – surely that’s why we are all here?”

Councillor Michael Dunk (Green, Frome West) shared Ms Slocombe’s sentiments, arguing: “With the winter coming on and people being concerned about whether they can afford their council tax or fuel bills, can we have some idea of what the waiting time is?

“I think it’s important that people aren’t discouraged from hanging on and lose heart.”

Councillor Federica Smith-Roberts, portfolio holder for communities, housing revenue account, culture, equalities and diversity, said the council was trying to “channel shift” people into reporting more issues online – and admitted one method to encourage this was longer hold times for certain issues.

She said: “Where it is possible to self-serve online – when it comes to things like reporting missed waste collections – we are purposefully making people wait further to log that.

“For those that can do, we want people to log it online. We will make people wait a minimum of three minutes on that line.”

Ms Smith-Roberts (one of two Liberal Democrat division members for Taunton East) said that maintaining high-quality customer service would prove challenging in the years ahead as a result of the council’s ongoing transformation programme.

She said: “When it comes to the wider picture of what customer service looks like in the future, it will be impacted as we go through many changes as a council moving forward regarding our structure.

“We will have less people to work with across the whole business, and that will impact on demand.

“Those that can self-serve online should try to do this where possible, so it frees up the phone lines and there is less of a wait time for those who genuinely need to come through.

“I’d like to give assurance that our services work hard to give a good service to customers. We deal with 1.2 million contacts each year.

“Our customer service team do passionately care about the people they serve. They give advice, information and support, and this is reflected in the customer satisfaction rating of almost 85 per cent.

“It is true that some days customers wait longer than we would like, but it is a demand-led service and we try very hard during peak times to ensure that we have more advisers available to ensure customer queries at the first point of contact.

“In July, we managed to resolve 81 per cent of calls without having to pass people on.”