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Key findings
Outcomes
The quality of enquiry handling by Enquiry Point operators was generally good. Operators were polite, respectful, professional and empathetic. In most cases, they provided accurate information to those making enquiries and resolved enquiries appropriately.
Operators and their managers are committed to delivering the best service possible but could be better supported by the wider organisation. Operators require better guidance, training, systems and processes.
Between October 2023 and September 2024, Enquiry Point received 343,205 calls. 19% of these calls were not admitted to the call queue because it was full. 50% of calls admitted to the queue were abandoned before the caller spoke to an operator.
The average time callers waited to speak to an operator was eight minutes and 34 seconds.
COPFS requires to look afresh at Enquiry Point’s demand, to consider what level of service COPFS aims to provide to those who call and email, and to set measurable targets that support delivery.
COPFS does not currently gather user feedback about how it responds to enquiries. This is a missed opportunity to hear from members of the public and partner organisations about how it can improve its service.
Direction
The work of Enquiry Point was well understood and highly valued by senior leaders within COPFS. This understanding was not shared across the organisation. Many staff had low awareness of the volume and range of enquiries resolved by Enquiry Point.
There is a need to clarify the purpose and remit of Enquiry Point.
Governance and oversight of how COPFS responds to enquiries could be improved.
There is a lack of data about who makes enquiries and what they are about. This hampers efforts to make service improvements and meet the needs of users.
We found that 22% of calls and emails to Enquiry Point represented failure demand. There is scope to pre-empt, divert and reduce demand on Enquiry Point.
Delivery
There is a gap in corporately approved guidance to help all staff respond to enquiries.
Teams across COPFS organise their business in a way that takes account of local needs, resources and case volumes. However, these local variations present challenges when they interact with a national service such as Enquiry Point. Identifying the correct team or person to contact, and the correct method of contact, is a challenging and time consuming task for operators.
While Enquiry Point managers have done their best to develop the training programme for operators, there is scope for improvement. There is an imbalance between shadowing, e-learning and other forms of learning, and inconsistency in delivery due to operational demands.
Many enquiries provide information that is relevant to the management of cases. This information is not always recorded or easily accessible to those who may require it.
The transfer of callers to other teams within COPFS is one of the most significant challenges faced by Enquiry Point. Operators make many attempts to transfer callers that do not succeed. Either the transfer does not succeed at all and operators require to take other steps to deal with the enquiry, or there are multiple attempts to transfer before transfer is eventually achieved.
Operators noted that some individuals and some teams are more than willing to accept calls. This included teams that had a strong sense of ownership of their cases or teams that recognised they had specialist expertise unavailable to Enquiry Point.
Transfer difficulties affect the overall quality of and public confidence in the service delivered by COPFS. We welcome new initiatives to address these difficulties.
It appeared that Enquiry Point was prioritising calls over email enquiries. Enquiry Point should be looking to provide comparable levels of service, regardless of whether an enquiry is made by phone or email.
COPFS requires to identify the appropriate level of staffing for Enquiry Point, taking into account demand, the level of service it aspires to deliver, and the financial resources available to it.
Operators have a high level of productivity and work diligently throughout the day responding to call and email enquiries with little downtime.
The high turnover of operators means the recruitment, induction and training of staff is an almost continuous endeavour.
Recruiting appropriate candidates has been challenging but the opening of a second site in Glasgow for Enquiry Point offers opportunities to address this.
Staff across COPFS said IT systems did not help them do their job well.
A new contact centre application for Enquiry Point was introduced in 2022. This caused challenges, and the anticipated benefits of the application have not been fully realised.
Poor project governance meant there was insufficient oversight of the challenges associated with implementation of the contact centre application.
Generally, more consideration needs to be given to the specific needs of Enquiry Point in terms of the systems it requires to deliver an effective enquiry handling service.