Remit
The Contact Council provides oversight across the public sector on all matters relating to customer contact. In its first stage in 2007, The Council began overseeing the improvement of performance and standards in publicly-funded contact centres, by encouraging their accreditation and promoting a range of best practices. Whilst this work of course remains important, the Council’s responsibilities have now broadened to include:
- Leading, and being seen to lead, customer contact in the public sector and owning oversight responsibility for customer contact in the public sector including setting and delivering a vision for future public services contact and providing professional advice and guidance on policy–related matters;
- Managing the transformation of contact in Government (matching and bettering private sector best practice), developing and implementing plans across government to improve customer contact;
- Implementing the recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report which requires the Cabinet Office to publish channel strategy guidance. This guidance will be used by central government departments to devise and implement their own strategies on multi-channel use by March 2010;
- Building the customer contact competence and creating a network of professionals in Government by actively promoting the development of customer contact skills across the 60,000 public sector contact centre staff;
- Delivering a joined–up view of how CSR07 efficiency savings in Government contact centres will be delivered and linking delivery of relevant PSA targets to pan–government customer contact objectives;
- Setting standards, best practices and performance targets for Government’s contact business;
- Developing a digital switchover programme in the context of the June 2009 ‘Digital Britain’ report.
