Our customer charter

Our overall aims for customer care are:

to meet peoples’ needs
to be polite and professional
to be helpful and knowledgeable
to strive to resolve as much as we can at first point of contact
if we can’t resolve queries at first point, to give customers a realistic and reasonable expectation of when we will get back to them
to listen to and act on feedback

Digital services and emails

We aim to provide as many of our services digitally as possible. Almost all transactions that can be done over the phone are now available through our customer portal.

Our digital services aim to be:

simple to use
quick
easy to find
intuitive
accessible

When you contact us online or via email, we will:

send an acknowledgement back to you so you know your contact has been received
include in the acknowledgement a reasonable and realistic idea of when we will get back to you, if it can’t be answered immediately
respond digitally, not by letter

Social media is an important part in how people live their lives. We are happy to help you in any way we can and in order for us to do that effectively, we have a short set of rules on how we use social media and how we expect our customers to use it too.

Our social media accounts are monitored during business hours. We aim to respond to direct messages within one working day.

What we will do…

We will confirm it’s us. If you see a North Devon Council account online, you can check it’s us by visiting the following links:

We will listen. Our customer services team will read all messages and look to flag-up problems with the relevant parts of the organisation.

We will say when we will monitor each account. We will not be online 24-hours a day but we will try our best to get back to you within one working day. We try to monitor our social media pages between 9am-5pm, Monday to Friday.

We will be human and polite. We’ll treat each message with the politeness you’d expect if you were dealing with us face-to-face, via email or over the telephone.

What we would like you to do in return…

Be polite. Please remember, we’re human. The person monitoring our social media account is trying to help.

Don't be anti-social. We won’t tolerate swearing, threats or abuse online, just as we don’t offline.

Don't be personal. If you have a complaint to make against an individual, please do not share on social media. Instead please head to our feedback page.

Don't spam. Making the same points, otherwise known as spamming, isn’t for our social media. If you have an issue, please contact us privately.

Don't over-share. If you’ve got an issue, we will happily look into it, but please be careful not to post private information about yourself or others.

We would also like to make you aware that we cannot support third party charities or petitions and do not allow advertising or political comments on our social channels.

Overall social media works fine but on the rare occasion, where the minority don’t stick to our rules, we reserve the right to delete offending content and block you from contacting us through that route.

Our external social media policy outlines how we interact with customers and acceptable conduct.

Telephones

We aim to answer telephones in a friendly and professional manner stating our name and our department. We aim to answer phones quickly although at busy times, there may be a short wait.

If we need to transfer your call, we will ensure we explain the nature of your call to the person you need to speak to. If their voicemail is on, we will retrieve your call, take a message and ask the person to make contact with you.

Occasionally, you may get through to an answerphone. These are checked regularly and you should get a call back within 24 hours.

Letters

If you write to us, if we are unable to answer you within a few days, we will send you an acknowledgement, giving you an idea of when you will receive a response which will be within a reasonable timescale. If we are unable to meet the date we have set, we will keep you updated on our progress.

Face to face public areas

We have three face to face offices where we receive customers – Lynton House in Barnstaple, The Ilfracombe Centre and the Amory Centre in South Molton.

In our public, face to face areas, we will:

acknowledge you as quickly as possible
smile and politely welcome you
find out the reason for your visit
be friendly and helpful; listen to you, giving you our full attention
use plain language and avoid jargon
make sure the public area looks professional, clean, tidy and welcoming
be mindful of your confidentiality

If you have come for a meeting, we will contact the person you are visiting who will come and collect you and ensure you have been given a visitor’s badge.

Rude and aggressive customers

It is reasonable for us to expect our customers to:

be polite, courteous, non-abusive and non-threatening at all times
treat staff and other customers with respect and not behave in an anti-social manner
not be under the influence of alcohol or drugs
never resort to physical violence or commit illegal acts on our premises
not behave in a way that exposes themselves and others to risk
provide all relevant documentation/information when they visit us comply with all our reasonable requests
not scatter-gun our officers and services
not make unnecessarily excessive demands on the time and resources of staff

We reserve the right to terminate phone calls or conversations where customers do not adhere to any of the above.

In some instances we may be concerned about a customer's contact with us where they display 'unreasonable' or persistent behaviour. In these circumstances we will consider invoking sanctions through our Preventing and Controlling Violence, Aggression and Other Unreasonable Customer Behaviour Policy.

Accessibility

We are committed to providing quality services for all our customers and ensuring there is no discrimination when we deliver our services. We will do our best to provide access to information and services to suit everybody’s needs. For people with physical or language barriers, we will try to provide extra help, such as:

ensuring our information is available in appropriate formats (for example, on audio tape, in Braille, or in large print) on request
providing a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter, if necessary
offering to provide an interpreter for anyone who needs it
providing a portable induction loop if necessary
provide our documents in a language other than English, upon request
using the Type talk telephone service