“Our contact centre and customer service teams have worked incredibly hard to lift performance and rebuild trust in how we serve our communities.”
“This result is not accidental, it is the outcome of deliberate structural change, investment in leadership, and a clear focus on customer experience. To move from 61st nationally to 15th in one year is something our team should be immensely proud of.
The benchmarking programme evaluates real interactions between councils and residents across phone, email and online channels, assessing areas such as communication, listening, problem solving and overall experience.
The FNDC’s strongest results were in written channels, with email interactions scoring 97.8% (third nationally), the online portal scored 97.7% and phone interactions reached 91.4%.
Meanwhile, an internal council health, safety and wellbeing report showed that staff interacting with the public can still face difficult situations.
The report found threatening behaviour was the most commonly reported incident across the organisation, over the last quarter.
Incidents were recorded at service centres, libraries and during compliance and animal management work in the community.
Customer-facing staff were identified as facing one of the organisation’s six critical risks, along with working, driving on council business and site visits.
Despite the challenge, the council reported no lost-time injuries from work-related incidents during the quarter.
While the customer experience results place the Far North among the top-performing district councils nationally, the council said continuing to support staff working on the front line remains an important focus.
