Council to send texts on schools and bins

The “Alert Me” text service is expected to be available in May and will allow customers to choose which services they would like to be informed about.

And from April council bin men will be providing instant updates on how their bin collection rounds progress street by street.

Drivers will input information in their cabs confirming where waste has been collected and listing each address where a collection has not been made and why. The information will be immediately displayed in the council’s call centre, where staff will be able to send customers a text advising them if their waste has not been collected.

The plans are contained in a report into the performance of the call centre, which answers more than 800,000 calls and responds to about 7,000 emails each year. The contract currently delivered by KC Contact Centres is due to expire on December 1.

The report shows high levels of customer satisfaction, with the number of compliments (148) outstripping the number of complaints (143) between February 2011 and January this year. Staff conduct accounted for most complaints (32 per cent), followed by customer expectation (25 per cent) and communication (19 per cent).

But satisfaction levels dropped once a caller passed beyond the initial contact.

The report said: “These results indicate that the level of satisfaction with the contact centre and how the advisors handle the calls is consistently high. However, the level of satisfaction falls due to service failure or lack of contact on progress, ultimately affecting the overall satisfaction level.”

Services failing to meet expectations included street lighting, highways and traffic.