The SBWMA needed a consultant to provide on-going monthly monitoring services to evaluate Allied’s collection and call center performance in order to hold Allied Industries accountable to its franchise obligations with regard to delivering quality collection and customer service.
HF&H Solutions
In order to complete the Authority’s objectives, HF&H’s work tasks included:
Meeting with Allied staff to develop an agreed-upon methodology to documenting and reporting complaints and verifying compliance with the performance standards;
Quantifying the number of missed pick-up complaints not corrected within 24 hours for residential and commercial customers;
Assess call responsiveness by documenting trends in average hold times, percentage of calls answered in 90 seconds, and the average number of calls handled per day; and,
Document our findings, observations, and recommendations.
Results
HF&H identified $32,250 in liquidated damages as a result of missed pickups and other complaints from customers (i.e., damage to private property, excessive noise, discourteous behavior, spills, collecting during unauthorized hours, and Allied’s failure to properly return containers to where the customers place the containers for collection). In addition, HF&H found Allied’s current procedures for receiving, recording, and resolving complaints was not adequate to assess their compliance with the performance standards in the franchise agreement. Therefore, to assist the SBWMA in their on-going customer service monitoring, HF&H developed mutually-agreeable (to the SBWMA and Allied) procedures for the following:
Method of recording complaints and complaint resolutions;
Specific reports to be generated by Allied and the content and format of such reports;
Procedure for quantifying the number of complaints, events of non-compliance with performance standards; and,
The documentation needed to support assessment of liquidated damages going forward.
South Bayside Waste Management Authority 