Council call centre retains award

Date: 10/10/2011

Wokingham Borough Council has retained the title of being the leading local authority for telephone and email communication in the UK.

It held on to the accolade for the second consecutive year at the 2011 Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service Awards.

The contact centre uses local phone numbers to enable residents to get in touch and it also secured the top spot in the email communications category.

Rankings were based on the results of a mystery shopper programme and head of customer services and administration at the council Sarah Barrow said the achievement is "a tribute to the fantastic staff at Wokingham Direct for the amazing service they provide to our customers.

Workers handled over 200 telephone calls during the three-month assessment process and their performance was graded using strict scoring criteria.

All call centre operators should have customer satisfaction as their number one priority, chief executive of business process outsourcing company SouthWestern Jim Costello recently argued.

He told the Irish Times quality should not be sacrificed in favour of cost-cutting.