Eurobodalla Council has been judged the top council in Australia for customer service general enquiries in a quarterly national benchmarking report.
The results from Customer Service Benchmarking Australia were announced by Mayor Liz Innes at Tuesday’s Council meeting, who congratulated General Manager Dr Catherine Dale and all Council staff for setting such a high standard.
The improvement program was initiated by Dr Dale in July 2014 with the aim of improving Council’s customer service performance through CSBA’s ‘mystery shopper’ program.
The program is run quarterly and involves CSBA staff ringing and visiting the Council, posing as a resident with a common local government enquiry. Staff are measured on their greeting skills, their manner, how they resolved the enquiry, and phone and voicemail use.
For the March 2017 quarter, Eurobodalla was judged the top Council in Australia for customer service general enquiries ahead of Blacktown City Council in second place and City of Perth in third.
“We’ve made some great inroads in the past four years,” Dr Dale said, “but there’s always room for improvement as we aim for consistent and responsive customer service right across the organisation.”
Council’s performance has progressively improved since the monitoring began in 2014. It was ranked 29th of participating councils at that time with a score of 150 against the local government average of 155.
A continuous improvement program that included in-house staff training in customer service skills and telephone etiquette saw Council achieve a score of 175 against the local government average of 144 in the latest March 2017 result.
Dr Dale said the benchmarking is an investment with demonstrated results. “I’m incredibly proud of Council staff, who serve our community every day with courtesy and respect. This is a wonderful result for them.” MEDIA RELEASE Editors Comment: While The Beagle is committed to passing on media releases from its numerous sources, including our council, the media release above, while presented exactly as provided by council, is one that The Beagle openly challenges. The opening sentence declares that our council " has been judged the top council in Australia for customer service general enquiries in a quarterly national benchmarking report." That statement is blatantly false unless set with a context. Eurobodalla Council has been judged as being placed first amongst a group of 60 councils as measured by one company. Did they measure all their client councils - we don"t know. Did they measure all the councils in Australia? NO. There are 537 local government councils throughout Australia. So, clearly, it is not true to state that our council has been "judged the top in Australia". It would be disrespectful to the readers of the Beagle to offer the above media release without a comment. The Beagle DOES NOT endorse the above media release however it respects Eurobodalla Council's right to see such a media release distributed.
Above: this graphic IS NOT associated in any way with Council's official media release and was selected by the Beagle editor as an addendum to the comment above
