SERVICE SA

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide) (14:40): My question is to Minister for the Public Sector. Can the minister inform the house about the performance of the Service SA customer contact centre?

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. M.F. O'BRIEN (Napier—Minister for Finance, Minister for the Public Sector) (14:40): Yes, I could have done the GST one as well. I thank the member for Port Adelaide for the question. Service SA customer contact centres provide important facilities to people across South Australia such as motor vehicle registrations and driver's licences. For the nine months to March 2012, the state's customer contact centres received 798,790 calls compared with 694,937 for the same period in 2010-11. Overall, Service SA manages around 1.3 million calls, faxes and emails each year.

I am pleased to inform members that service has improved, with performance targets for answering having lifted to 90 per cent for answering calls within five minutes, as from February of this year. Members may be interested to know that this particular service is provided by 65 full-time equivalent staff employed in the CBD, metropolitan and regional locations. The opposition would be particularly interested in what I have to say about the way that we are using our regional locations.

In addition, some staff in metropolitan and regional customer service centres have been trained to provide telephone call centre services so that the workforce is more flexible across the network. Metropolitan and regional staff are increasingly multiskilled, translating into a back room operator also being equipped to provide front counter telephone services when needed which helps balance volume loads when high volumes occur.

The registration and licensing number, which is 13 10 84, allows for incoming calls to be directed to the closest local service centre. If someone is calling from a regional location, the call will automatically be directed to the closest customer service centre to be dealt with by a trained contact centre service member. By way of example, if somebody is ringing from the bottom of Eyre Peninsula, the call would automatically be allocated to the Port Lincoln office. However, if the call volumes for that regional centre are high, the call is redirected to another location after three minutes' waiting time. The reverse occurs when there is a high demand in the Adelaide contact centre with calls diverting to regional and other locations as overflows occur.

What we have done is set it up so that regional centres will take the overflow of metropolitan calls to our major call centre in the CBD. Having these staff and positions available in the regions offers employment and development opportunities that may not otherwise be accessible. Regional service centres are based in Berri, Gawler, Kadina, Mount Gambier, Naracoorte, Murray Bridge, Port Augusta, Port Pirie, Port Lincoln and Whyalla. I think this is a tremendous example of a decentralised service delivery model giving greater employment opportunities in regional South Australia.

The improved performance results have also been achieved by using virtual technology and real-time workforce planning tools. This means that staff can be switched between counter work, helping on the phones or providing back-of-house service as customer volumes require. Service SA call centre technology enables staff to view queue status and their own performance at any stage during the day. This promotes a high degree of self-management.

Managers and team leaders have a dashboard of statistics in coloured graphics that show their individual team performances. The central workforce planning team uses the dashboard to check call volumes across all call centres and teams to balance consumer demands very quickly. Service SA is continuing the develop this particular—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Thank you, minister. Your time has expired. Member for Bragg.