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Responding to the findings of the Ombudsman's direct investigation into the effectiveness of the Integrated Call Centre (ICC) in handling complaints, a spokesman for the Efficiency Unit (EU) said today (June 26) that the unit generally agreed with the recommendations of the Ombudsman and would actively work with the ICC's participating departments to implement the suggested improvements.
The spokesman said the effectiveness of the improvements introduced would be closely monitored, with results to be fed back to the Ombudsman afterwards.
"The ICC places much emphasis on the handling of complaints as they form an important part of the management process in improving the quality of the service provided to the public.
"As complaints received help departmental management look into areas where improvements are required, the ICC therefore considers it its responsibility to track and follow through the complaints properly.
"With the cooperation of the client departments, the ICC aims to handle complaints promptly, empathetically and with a human touch," the spokesman said.
Stressing the commitment of the ICC management and staff to delivering a high quality service to the public, the spokesman said the centre would continue to improve its system and processes, update its database, and provide training to staff in order to meet the public's high expectations of government service.
"In fact, the EU has been implementing a series of improvement measures on complaint handling over the past two years," the spokesman said.
Major improvement measures implemented or in the pipeline include:
(i) To ensure effective and timely handling of complaints, the ICC has implemented a multi-tier mechanism for monitoring case progress, which improved the interface between the centre and the departments.
(ii) The ICC conducts regular reviews of its database and the referral guidelines of cross-departmental complaint cases to provide proactive early intervention of cross-departmental complaints, and will continue to scout for cross-departmental subjects and work with departments concerned.
(iii) The ICC has solicited the public's view on its service on complaint handling through focus group discussions.
(iv) To better understand the public's feedback on the ICC's handling of complaints, the centre will engage an external consultant to conduct independent regular surveys with complainants to gauge the level of customer satisfaction.
Apart from answering telephone enquiries on behalf of 20 client departments, the spokesman pointed out that the centre's other important function was to handle complaints received through its hotline "1823" and the participating departments' hotlines.
Since becoming fully operational in 2002, the ICC has handled more than 12 million telephone calls.
Of the calls answered, 9% were complaints of which 5% of the complaint cases involved more than one department. Despite the ever increasing workload, the ICC managed to achieve the following key performance benchmarks in 2007:
* 80% of calls were answered within 18 seconds;
* abandon rate kept at a low level of 5%;
* achieving a score of 4.15 on a scale of five, with five being the highest score, in the Customer Satisfaction Survey; and
* achieving a first-time-resolution rate of over 90%.
The spokesman stressed that the ICC would continue to work actively with participating departments to further improve its services.
Ends/Thursday, June 26, 2008
Issued at HKT 11:54
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