|
Following on from the same meeting, the following information may be of interest particularly to those of you who deal with PS on a regular basis. It refers specifically to how things are done at Burnley, as we understand that procedures may be slightly different at other centres.
Of interest is the high call centre staff turnover, and the fact that Local service do not have access to the same screens as call centre staff....plus the fact that PS appear to be having some difficulties with the principle of Implied consent.
===============================================
Warrington and Burnley are both described as “Transformation” sites, i.e. they will not always be pension centres in the way that they are now. A new IT system is being introduced, which will create one “virtual” Pension Centre, i.e. any telephonist at any actual physical Pension Centre site will be able to take a claim over the telephone and deal with queries, irrespective of where the customer lives.
There is quite a bit of new jargon being used within the Pension Service, which you might encounter, so you’ll need to know that the processing is currently split into two parts: “Business as Usual” (“BaU”) and “New World”.
“BaU” is the current way of working, that we have been used to since the Pension Service was launched (and it is the BaU teams that take all the calls and changes of circumstances), whilst “New World” is the process by which people have been able to make new claims over the telephone since October 2006 without there being any need for a physical, signed claim form (security questions are asked to validate each claim). Any documents that are sent in to Burnley are scanned and the new IT will eventually enable scanned documents to be viewed by each agent. The part of the process that, hitherto, has been known as “New Claims” is now called “Customer Capture”.
State Retirement Pension claims are dealt with in date of birth order whilst Pension Credit claims are dealt with in date of receipt order.
CALL CENTRE ISSUES
The workforce at the pension centres is subject to high turnover because of competition from other call centres and contact centres (there are 120 in Warrington alone). In order to allow for the high turnover and to enable telephonists to be trained as processors (up to 50 at a time), the Pension Service is having to recruit. Consequently, there are high levels of inexperience and in many cases you’ll know more about the technicalities of your customers’ claims than the people you’re talking to on the ‘phone at the Pension Centre. In large part this is due to the fact that the Telephony staff are not benefit-trained.
Some decision making responsibilities currently held at EO (Executive Officer) level will be delegated to AO (Administrative Officer) level.
If something has been done incorrectly the Telephony staff should refer it on to the processors. There are 600 staff in Burnley, of whom 100 are dealing with new claims. Once “Transformation” is complete (between March and May 2008) there will be no purely telephony teams.
You may not get a call back if the telephonists have incoming calls waiting to be answered. At Burnley there are wall displays showing the number of calls waiting etc.
IMPLIED CONSENT
A lot of what we discussed concerned the application of the implicit consent principles. The need to protect personal information and prevent it from falling into the wrong hands is still something that is dinned into staff. Indeed, the Pension Service is embarking on a programme of its own bogus calls to test the resilience of the protection of personal information. We saw several posters around the Pension Centre when we had a tour round after the meeting warning staff about the danger of bogus callers.
We did point out that we, as advisers, are not asking for information that might be useful to an unscrupulous individual posing as a bona fide caller. For example, we wouldn’t be asking about current or former addresses, dates of birth, NI Nos or bank accounts because we already have that information. We stressed that this needs to be borne in mind by the staff at the Pension Centre. Some differences in working practices between pension centres were identified, but the Pension Service is working towards a “Standard Operating Model”.
Claims made over the ‘phone are dealt with more quickly than those made by completing a paper claim form. We might, therefore, consider whether in some cases it might be better to make the claim over the ‘phone when you are with the customer.
LOCAL SERVICE ISSUES
Local Service does not have access to all the same computer dialogue screen as staff in the pension centres. The system is called CAM. Local Service staff are encountering similar problems in contacting pension centres as we are and the pension centres are looking at introducing Single Points of Contact (SPoCs), i.e. individuals with a dedicated role in answering queries.
|
