By Dan Ilett, 23 November 2005 11:59
NEWS
The government is failing to answer the phone to jobseekers, after it rolled out a new customer service IT system to help more people into work.
The CEO of Jobcentre Plus, Lesley Strathie, admitted that since the deployment of a customer management system (CMS) in contact centres and benefit offices, people have had trouble contacting the organisation.
In a written response to a parliamentary question, Strathie wrote: "Change on this scale does create challenges in maintaining levels of customer service for some parts of the business during this period of transition and transformation. As a result, some customers claiming working age benefits have, of late, experienced difficulties getting through to some of our contact centres."
Strathie was responding to Conservative MP Tim Boswell, who asked the government about the current status of the CMS in Jobcentre Plus.
Jobcentre Plus is aimed at combining the Employment Service and parts of the Benefits Agency to help more people into work.
The CMS was designed to change the way people claim benefits and move data into the government's Income Support Computer and Jobseeker's Allowance Payment Systems.
Strathie said despite the hold-ups the government had made moves to improve training and recruitment to meet the high demand for calls.
She added: "Early indications following the process adjustments are encouraging. We have seen week-on-week improvements in customer service since the beginning of September.
"Whilst we have sought to minimise the impact of these changes for our staff and customers, some disruption has been unavoidable and this may regrettably contribute to delays in processing benefit claims for some customers."
Comments
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1. Chris Goodman
Quote: some disruption has been unavoidable unquote. This is indicative of the muddled thinking in the taxpayer funded public service Managerial planning should be of sufficient quality that there is NO disruption in the services. Where any public service fails to meet it's committment then I feel it is a managerial failure and the only solution, ESPECIALLY IN PUBLIC SERVICE, is for the resignation or dismissal of the management executives responsible for the failure.
It is an unfortunate fact of life that far too many junior and middle executives in the public service have been promoted above their capability ceiling and competency.
2. anonymous
The JobCentre needs to do more to promote services which reduces the need for customer representatives in certain areas. Similar to how cashline machines have been used at banks.
The touch-screen displays for use by unemployed people to find jobs have been very successful, but why stop there?
The jobcentreplus website is pretty good but it would be more convenient for an unemployed person to find jobs from their mobile phone using WAP. Yes unemployed people use mobile phones as well you know!
3. Roger Huffadine
In other words -
We planned poorly - We rolled out hastily - The resulting performance was crap - We are finding it easy to improve on a crap performance.
Its impossible to find words to describe the incompetence of this government and its departments.