Carlisle Customer Contact Centre
Improvements to customer care
(Date of issue: Tuesday 1 March 2011)
Work to further improve customer care has been completed in
Carlisle City Council’s Civic Centre.
As part of the works, four extra information desks and two more
interview rooms are now available within the council’s Customer
Contact Centre. This will cut down on the time that customers have
to wait to see an advisor and also allows the opportunity for
advice on other services to be provided.
The electronic information system has also been upgraded. This
tells customers how long they have to wait to see an advisor.
Work started on the improvement works last November and was
completed last week.
The Customer Contact Centre is based on the ground floor of the
Civic Centre and now includes 12 contact points dealing with a
range of services including housing benefits, council tax,
planning, parking, refuse & recycling at a single point of
contact. There is also a cashier facility. Other amenities
include:
- specially trained dedicated customer service staff;
- six private interview rooms;
- access to Cumbria Police advisors;
- a children’s activities area;
- security measures such as CCTV.
The customer contact centre also advises customers on adult
social care queries on behalf of Cumbria County Council and is a
third part reporting centre for hate crime.
Cllr Jacquelyne Geddes, Portfolio holder for Community
Engagement, said:
“The improvement works put the needs of our customers first and
will ensure that enquiries are dealt with in the most efficient way
possible. The Customer Contact Centre is one of the best facilities
of its type but we’re always striving to make our customer care
better.”
The Customer Contact Centre is open 9am to 5pm Mondays to
Thursdays and 9am to 4pm on Fridays. In 2009/10 Carlisle City
Council’s customer contact centre helped 37,728 customers (in
person) with queries and dealt with 45,923 telephone calls.