Friday is always a good day to take stock. Today is day five of National Customer Service Week and so it’s a great opportunity to think about what has happened. It was not just ICT Services that got involved. Social Care Direct, Transport, First Contact, Customer Services (of course), Neighbourhood Services, Highways, Regeneration and Economic Development, Planning and Performance as well as Children and Adults have all had something going on. It’s been a busy week.
Out intranet site kindly gave us an infographic on some of the customer numbers we enjoy as a Council and these put what we do in perspective. Every day over nine thousand people will ring us and over eleven thousand will come along to see us face to face. While the use of electronic means of communication is growing the amount of letters we receive is still almost three times higher than other methods. The post person (steady) brings us just under three thousand items a day.
As for our web sites every year we get more than ten million page views from about one and a half unique visitors. The most visited sites are planning applications, bin collections, school holidays and council tax while the most searched items are jobs, planning (again), council tax (again) and maps.
We are a big organisation with a complex relationship with our many users. It is good to see so many parts of the Council involved.
That’s all good stuff but let’s get back to ICT Services. We finished the week off with our highly amusing and much vaunted annual inter-team quiz. (I’ve got myself into a bit of a mess there as really we are supposed to be one team and so perhaps it should be intra-team). Anyway we had four teams: The Pink Panthers; The Crack Baby Athletic Association (I don’t understand it either (that’s not part of their name but I genuinely don’t understand it)); The Flowerpot Men; and Kris’ Angels.
Quiz question asker Tom laid out the ground rules. There were to be twenty questions leading to a possible twenty three points and it would be in the style of a pub quiz. We didn’t use the video technology this year to avoid accusations of rigging. No running, petting or dive bombing was allowed. Cath put on a spread and took the photographs.
Fourth winner (last) were the Pink Panthers with ten points, while Kris’ Angels came third with thirteen and the Flowerpot men came second with fourteen. It services them right for fielding an all-male team.
The runaway winners were the CBAAs with nineteen points. It turns out that this is the same order in which the teams won last year. Once again Applications and Development reign supreme. I think they may have had some professionals in there. If they win it next year they get to keep the trophy. It also showed that the technology had not made a difference to the scores.
Everyone came away with a prize, this is local government after all, with medals for the top three and highly decorated wooden spoons for those at the end. It was all a bit of fun.
Happy National Customer Service Week everybody!
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 