Customer Service Centre

What do we do?

Our Customer Service Centre is open from Monday to Friday between 8am and 6pm and handles emails, telephone calls and post.

How to contact us

The Customer Service Advisors are able to deal directly with enquiries regarding the services listed below:

About our telephone service

The 0300 number

The 0300 number is treated as a local call regardless of where you live in the county, and it can be included as part of any inclusive call minutes or discount schemes in the same way as geographic calls.

Over time, all calls made by the public will be moved to this one number and picked up in our customer service centre.

When you call our 0300 number, you will hear a welcome message offering numbered options.

Once you’ve chosen a service option there is a service welcome message to ensure you have got to the right service. The second layer of options may change occasionally to reflect seasonal demand for some services.

Customer Service Centre call recording and retention policy

The customer service centre records all calls received for training and quality assurance purposes.

Quality assurance includes investigation work around allegations made against Northamptonshire County Council to ensure the quality of the call was of the correct standard and if not we are able to provide additional training to staff.

We will retain calls for a period of 18 months since the call was received, to ensure we capture all types of year i.e. calendar, financial or academic.

IT will delete calls periodically to ensure we are not holding calls for longer than this period.

Why are there numbered options?

The number option system allows us to provide a single contact number and still be able to prioritise calls for the serious and the high volume services – such as child and adult care services, registrations and roads (including Street Doctor).

The options will also include seasonal services such as those for school admissions and adult learning.

Other services will come through together under a final option of ‘all other council enquiries’.

This enables us to continue to provide service specific information as part of the message – e.g. opening hours, out of hours contacts and online services.

What are the telephone options?

First option number	Second option number (if required)	Service
Option 1	N/A	Children’s social care and child safeguarding
Option 2	Then option 1	Adult social care or to report suspected abuse
Option 2	Then option 2	Olympus Care Services
Option 3	N/A	Births, deaths, marriages, citizenship or nationality checking
Option 4	N/A	Roads and Street Doctor
Option 5	N/A	Coronavirus helpline
Option 6	Then option 1	Libraries
Option 6	Then option 2	School admissions
Option 6	Then option 3	Adult learning
Option 6	Then option 4	Blue badge
Option 6	Then option 5	All other enquiries including: Free school meals Parking permits for country parks Any other service

If I know the option I want do I have to listen to all the messages?

No. As soon as you hear any message begin, you can enter the option number(s) to go straight to the welcome message for the service you want.

For example:

For country parks parking permits enter 54
For libraries enter 51

Who's in charge?

The Customer Service Centre ultimately reports to Kerry Purnell, Assistant Director for Corporate & Community Services.

Kerry heads a team of CSC Manager, Operations Manager, 4 Team Leaders, 34 full time equivalent (FTE) Customer Service Advisors, 6 FTE Customer Service Administrators dealing with non-phone contacts and 6 FTE Adult Care staff.