Citizen Support brings together council staff from the former Revenues, Benefits and Customer Service divisions to create one seamless service for everyone.
“Local residents have told us they want us to make it easier and more convenient for them to contact their council,” explains Cabinet Member for Customer Service, Councillor Chris Ready. “We have listened and acted. By having one dedicated service we believe we will be able to deal with more of our customers’ needs in one place at a time to suit them. It is the kind of modern forward-thinking service that people rightly expect and we aim to deliver.”
The new team is currently working on a major IT project to overhaul out-dated technology and transfer three systems worth of customer data onto a single, unified system. This will deliver faster benefit claims processing for residents and enable council partners such as Registered Social Landlords to send important data direct to the council to further decrease processing times.
Modernising the council’s benefits systems is just one of a series of customer service improvements happening at Wigan Council.
The opening of the Wigan Life Centre (south site) in September follows the sucess of the borough’s five ‘Local Life Centres’, which are already earning an amazing 99 per cent customer satisfaction face-to-face and 91 per cent over the phone.
When Wigan Life Centre North opens in January, following the closure of the council’s remaining cash offices, the modernisation programme will be complete.
“Alongside our public service contact centre,” adds Cllr Ready, “The life centres are resolving a high level of your enquiries at the first point of contact.
“Our aim is to deliver more effective and efficient services to the people who depend on us but also continue to drive down costs and reduce the amount of bureaucracy and red tape people are faced with.”
For enquiries about Wigan Council services visit Wigan Council website or call the Customer Service helpline on 01942 828644.
