A COUNCIL’S contact centres and phone lines are not up to scratch,  leaving customers angry and frustrated, a concerned councillor claims.

This week Conwy Council’s financial resources overview and scrutiny committee met to debate the council’s digital strategy report.

The report included details of how council technology will evolve until 2027.

The committee members backed the report, but one concerned councillor slammed Conwy’s contact centres where council customer service staff respond to enquiries by taking telephone calls or via an online chat service.

Pensarn and Pentre Mawr councillor Paul Luckock said the service provided by the centres was not good enough.

He also complained about individual council departments not picking up calls.

READ MORE: Man slashed by knife in Llandudno leads anti-knife crime campaign

Questioning Conwy’s IT manager Neil Payne, Cllr Luckock complained of customers being cut off, unreturned calls, and of an unresolved ‘bleep’ on the phone lines.

Constituents had a “very frustrating time ringing into the council on matters, still getting these issues where people get cut off. It just drops off,” he claimed.

“I was assured that the bleep had been sorted. People (are) trying to speak to people and being told even in big departments that there is nobody online at the moment; people leaving voicemails but voicemails apparently getting lost or not responded to.

“Is there something we can do with the IT and digital services to make this a much more efficient and effective service for customers?”

 Mr Payne admitted the council had some staff training issues: “I’ll put my hand up. I think there have sometimes been issues, probably around staff training in terms of things like picking up on voicemail, and that is something we are trying to keep awareness of and make sure they know – everyone should have a voicemail switched on.

“It does drop into your (staff email) inbox now and translate it (the voicemail) into words, so if you leave a voicemail, it should drop into your inbox as well to give you a text version of the voicemail

“It is really down to us working with the services and working with the customer service teams, colleagues that are working at receptions and working with them to make sure they are happy with us providing a service, either corporately or within the individual services.”

He added: “The technology is there, and it’s pretty expansive, so there is not much we can’t do with it.”