Hull City Council

Connect 300300, a partnership between Hull City Council and KC Contact Centres has been awarded ‘Pathfinder status’ as an example of best practice to other government authorities.

Hull City Council


When the Government introduced the modernisation agenda, Hull City Council (HCC) embarked upon a project which aimed to provide all of its residents with improved access to public and housing services. Hull Connect 300300 was created as a result of a partnership between Hull City Council and KC Contact Centres.

The Challenge

Previously, citizens of Hull had to choose from one of over 250 published telephone numbers located at up to 200 different sites in order to contact their Council. It was a situation that led to much confusion, especially when it came to housing enquiries where, depending on the caller’s address and time of day, there were different numbers to ring and different processes to follow.

The Solution

Hull Connect 300300 was introduced to provide customers with a single number to call for any Council query.

After a six month pilot HCC awarded KC Contact Centres a seven year contract to operate their Hull Connect 300300 customer services operation. As a result the contact centre now handles over 800,000 calls a year and around 1000 emails a month from over 137 service areas; and covers matters as diverse as environmental health, waste management, traffic & highways, council tax and housing repairs. A further back office migration took place in October 2005 for HCC’s pioneering choice-based lettings scheme known as Homesearch.

KC Contact Centres now handle all housing enquiries, from sending out application packs, to taking rent payments or placing bids on vacant properties. By using Northgate’s Repair finder, KC Contact Centres also deals with all property repairs from initial diagnostics and logging the call, liaising with approved contractors and appointment setting through to tracking progress until resolution.

The Benefits

  • Customer satisfaction improved to over 98%
  • 20% increase in service level achievement
  • Reduced costs in capital outlay
  • 6% improvement in first time resolution, reducing repeat callers by 1000 calls per week
  • 13% reduction in call handle time
  • Flexible resources that allow the Council to increase capacity during peak times