Identifying, monitoring & reducing avoidable contact
We’ve all been there, done that and got the T-shirt. We’ve rung the council because the rubbish hasn’t been collected; phoned the call centre because we can’t find the information on the web site; gone to the bank without the ‘correct’ ID…..: In fact the concept of ‘avoidable contact’ is common sense.
Ask almost anyone if they have made contact with a business that was unnecessary and they will be able to reel of example after example. Avoidable contact is a waste of time, effort and usually money for both consumers and organisations.
But in the case of Local Government ‘reducing avoidable contact’ has a more specific meaning. Reduction of avoidable contact is one of the National Indicators that will be assessed within the new performance management framework agreed between Communities and Local Government and the Local Government Association. Reducing avoidable contact is National Indicator number 14 (of 198!) and is frequently referred to as NI14.
So, for most organisations, reducing avoidable contact makes obvious business sense and local government is taking a structured approach to improving service to manage both effort and cost.
Why measure it?
It’s a cliché, but if you don’t measure it you can’t manage it. Most organisations ‘know’ that they get unnecessary contact – if you have a call centre then just ask the customer service representatives, they’ll give you more than a few anecdotes. But anecdotal evidence won’t give you the hard facts that you need.Before you can reduce avoidable contact you need to know the volume and, perhaps more importantly, build a clear picture of what causes it – is it poor information? Processes that need improving? More training needed? ……. Once you have a metric you can work on improvement.
Why reduce it?
Reducing avoidable contact ISN’T about generating nice performance metrics. Nor is it just about making life ‘better’ for your customers – no matter how laudable an aim that may be. Any contact causes workload. As simple transactions are increasingly satisfied by consumer self-service – internet and automatic voice systems - the content of the person-to-person contacts you receive are more complex and take longer. Reducing avoidable contact gives you more capacity to handle the unavoidable contacts more effectively and, in turn, reduce end-to-end workload.How does rostrvm help?
rostrvm CallGuide is a desktop IT application used by public sector and commercial organisations to support contact processes and record contact outcome data. Our approach is enhancement, not replacement. CallGuide complements your existing technology.Dependent on your specific needs CallGuide can be applied simply to record outcomes, such as avoidable contact, through to full contact – flow management linked to your contact management systems and databases.
To learn more about rostrvm, NI14 and avoidable contact reduction click here.
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