Council chief gets call centre job

West Somerset chief exec to man the phones...

By Andy McCue, 30 September 2005 13:40

NEWS A council chief executive is heading to the frontline on Monday to man the phones and answer calls from the public in a council call centre.

The exercise isn't due to a sudden staff shortage in West Somerset District Council's call centre but a PR stunt to raise awareness of the work of staff for National Customer Service Week, which starts on 3 October.

West Somerset chief executive Tim Howes will be one of several senior officers at the council who will get to experience at first hand how their customer services staff deal with the public and the range of queries raised by callers.

Council staff and members of the public are also being invited to look behind the scenes and chat to customer services advisors in person.

Councillor Angela Palmer, council cabinet member, said in a statement: "People generally do not know how much our customer advisers can do for them. They are a team of highly-trained people who can generally answer something like 80 per cent of all the inquiries that are made."

Some of the most common calls to the council's call centre are apparently about recycling, pest control, dog dirt, abandoned vehicles and fly tipping.

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