Performance

Strategic objective 1: Customer service and operations

Telephone Services

• The demand for Telephone Services has continued to grow by 10 per cent over the year.
• An average of 15,500 calls are received each day, accounting for 26,000 applications.
• 99 per cent of our customers are satisfied with the courtesy and helpfulness of staff.
• 97 per cent of our customers are satisfied with the information provided.

To improve call answering times further and to enable us to cope with increasing demand, we have installed a new call routing system. This system was fully operational at the beginning of 2004. The new system is now producing substantial savings in call waiting times.

Now over 95 per cent of calls are answered within 30 seconds or less, compared with 56 per cent of calls answered within three minutes in the previous year.

Delays are now rare, but when they do occur, customers hear a message providing an estimated time to answer.

We have also introduced a system that enables callers to be routed directly to a Welsh-speaking operator if they wish.