150,000-plus customer service tasks logged in Lake Mac in past year

Published on 13 July 2022

Waste, rates and building enquiries have emerged as the hottest topics for Lake Mac residents making enquiries through Council’s Customer Service Centre, data from the past 12 months reveals.

Lake Macquarie City Council dealt with more than 154,000 calls, emails, over-the-counter transactions and social media enquiries in the 2021-22 financial year - an average of 590 every business day.

Call centre operators fielded almost 116,000 calls across the 12 months, with enquiries about waste, calls to pay rates and building and development application enquiries the most common topics covered.

But Director Organisational Services Melissa Rowe said the volume of telephone calls was on a downward trend, year-on-year, as residents increasingly switched to social media, or sought out help via self-service options on Council’s website.

“We’ve made a lot more of our services available online, so customers can self-serve 24 hours a day rather than needing to contact our Customer Service Centre during business hours,” she said.

“That means customers can process their transactions quicker and allows staff working in our call centre to concentrate on more complex transactions and issues.”

Customer service staff dealt with more than 1800 social media and processed 30,600 customer emails in the past 12 months.

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a significant decline in the number of over-the-counter interactions in the past financial year.

Customer Service Officers dealt with 6022 walk-in enquiries – fewer than half the volume recorded pre-pandemic.

“Those numbers are down significantly, but it’s important to note that our face-to-face service remained open to the public throughout the pandemic to ensure our most vulnerable customers could still access the services they required,” Ms Rowe said.

Lake Macquarie Mayor Kay Fraser said customer service was often a thankless and challenging task.

“Our officers are on the frontline when dealing with complicated and controversial topics,” she said.

“But I’m incredibly proud of how they deal efficiently and professionally with such a high volume of enquiries every day.”

A new call-back service introduced in March, where an automated system remembers a caller’s place in a queue, then calls them back without them having to wait on hold, has also proved successful.

Ms Rowe said more than 4000 callers had opted for the call-back rather than sit on hold.

Also popular was a pilot program earlier this year providing common customer service transactions such as rates payments, animal registrations and kitchen green waste caddy purchases at Morisset Library.

Ms Rowe said plans were underway to extend the trial to other Lake Mac Libraries branches in coming months.