Residents and businesses needing help with council services will benefit from an improved customer experience after cabinet approved a £273,000 upgrade to the council’s telephone system.

The investment will allow the library and resident service to offer an even more convenient service including improved facilities for requesting a return call during busy periods and live notification of the estimated call wait.

It will also enable better monitoring of the service’s performance and allow phone and email contact from customers to be tracked simultaneously.

Following an action plan in May, the phone performance of the contact centre has improved significantly and since June this year 96.8 percent of all calls received have been answered, with 88.7 percent being answered within the council’s 60 second target.

Cllr Samantha Rayner, cabinet member for culture and communities and customer and business services, said: “If residents or businesses need help with one of our services we want them to be able to contact us when and how it suits them.

“That is why we created the library and resident service which now gives a variety of ways to contact us including through self-serve terminals, speaking to council officers in person or over the telephone seven days a week and a whole range of services available 24 hours a day online.

“We are now at a stage where the telephone system is not fit for the level of service we want to provide our residents with, and this investment will allow us to build on the improvements we have already made.”

The new upgrade is expected to be completed by the end of the year. The investment will also lead to a revenue saving of £80,000.

The council created the library and resident service to provide access to services where and when residents need them. Since the three service hubs in Ascot, Maidenhead and Windsor opened in July the majority of council services are now available seven days a week, in line with library opening hours.