The Calls That Stop Coming

Abstract

A fall in what customers need to say is a gain only when the counting was agreed before the answer was known. It is a quarter to six on the last Thursday in March, and the finance director of a housing association is reading the paper the board will discuss on Monday. It is the budget for the coming year, and on page four, in a box, there is a line she did not write. Calls to the repairs line, it says, have fallen by a fifth since the autumn, following changes to how repairs are booked. The line proposes that next year's budget assume the fall continues, and that the contact centre's agency hours be reduced to match. She believes something real has happened. She has sat at the end of the row with the spare headset herself, at the head of customer services' invitation, and heard fewer people begin with I'm ringing again about . But four other things sit in her stomach like a stone. The winter was mild, and in a mild winter fewer boilers fail. In January the association launched a way for tenants to report repairs online, and some of the calls that are no longer calls are now forms.