101 – The Single Non-Emergency Number

Continuing to Create the Best Customer Contact Centre Teams in Wales

Cardiff is one of only five areas in Britain chosen to pilot the ‘101’ service, with national roll-out of a Single Non-Emergency Number scheduled for 2008.  Over 70% of 999 calls are not emergencies. The 101 service was introduced to enable the emergency services to focus on the true emergencies, whilst providing an alternative for members of the public to report non-emergency issues.

101 is a confidential 24-hour number giving direct access to advice, information and action for community safety matters, including non-emergency crime, policing and anti-social behaviour, while freeing up the 999 service to handle emergencies.

The 101 service is funded by the Home Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government and is provided jointly for the Cardiff area by the police (South Wales Police) and local councils (Cardiff Council), working in partnership.

The 101 Contact Centre based at Cardiff Gate deals with enquiries 24 hours a day, over the phone, by giving advice and information where needed, arranging for action to be taken when appropriate or by directing the caller to a person or organisation who can help them.

People living in the city can call to report…

  • Vandalism and graffiti
  • Drunken and rowdy behaviour
  • Broken street lighting
  • Abandoned vehicles
  • Dumping and fly tipping
  • Noisy neighbours and loud parties
  • Intimidation and Harassment


Our Brief

Following Insight’s multi award-winning success in selecting all Connect to Cardiff (C2C) and Consumer Direct Wales (CDW) staff, we were commissioned to select the 101 personnel including the centre manager, assistant centre manager, supervisors, senior advisors and the thirty strong advisor team.


How We Helped

Working closely with stakeholders, we gained a deep awareness of the culture, qualities and skills required within the new contact centre, which enabled us to:

  • Define the competency frameworks for all staff that would ensure delivery of an excellent service within a positive culture.

  • Design and deliver award-winning assessment centre processes which included realistic simulations of the challenges that would face successful candidates, which assessed their abilities to relate to callers and their issues and resolve calls wherever possible. These ‘slice of job’ activities not only provided the assessment team with a wealth of information about each candidate, but also gave candidates a realistic preview of what their roles would be like, setting their expectations about the work.

  • Provide in depth feedback to successful staff on their assessment centre performance as part of their induction process, to encourage them to take informed responsibility for their ongoing development priorities.

  • Use the information collected from the assessment centres to build high-performing teams that established themselves quickly and enabled the new teams to settle quickly and work effectively together. We ensured that there was strong ‘team fit’ for everyone, building morale and a sense of belonging.

 

The Results

 

  • Staff have received many compliments from the police for their quality of service including a personal thanks from the Chief Constable

  • High levels of enquiry resolution.

  • Excellent customer feedback including many unsolicited compliments.

  • Initial South Wales Police project manager has been able to end his secondment (to project manage the set up of the centre) early, since he feels ‘his work there is done’

  • The team continues to remain strongly bonded as a group. They are very supportive of each other, both in terms of maintaining a good working atmosphere and jointly resolving issues.

  • Centre operations expanded to take on seven more staff in June 2006
                                                                                                                              Table of Contents