Council call centre’s round-the-clock mahi

Residents calling Far North District Council after hours will have a faster, more efficient service thanks to out-of-hours calls again being handled in-house.

Changes to the council's call centre were introduced earlier this week and mean that every call made to the council's 0800 number will be answered by an FNDC staff member 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

As part of continued improvements to customer service, the council's call centre hours have also been extended by two hours to operate from 7am to 7pm.

Bringing the out-of-hours call centre back in-house removes external third-party services that can increase response times during the after-hours period. Under the previous system, service requests received by an external operator were assigned to the correct departments only after the weekend or the next business day, causing additional delays.

Now information will be handled faster, with instant escalations to the relevant departments, meaning fewer delays in managing request for service (RFS) calls – urgent and non-urgent.

The changes also reflect improving performances by the council's contact centre which receives around 4000 calls a month. The abandoned call rate is around 7 per cent, lower than the industry standard, while average call wait times, at under a minute, are at an all-time low.

"By bringing the call centre back in-house 24/7, it eliminates external service fees, which means better value for money for our residents and ratepayers and means we can focus funding and building better service capacity," says Ruben Garcia, Group Manager, Community and Engagement.

Far North District Council can be contacted 24 hours a day on 0800 920 029.