Ann Davie, Depute Chief Executive – Education, People & Business
TN Number:
143-21
Subject:
Follow-up to Website Technical Issues
Responsible Officer:
Vince McNulty, Executive Officer, Customer & Business Support Services
Publication:
This Technical Note will be published on the Council’s website following circulation to Members. Its contents may be disclosed or shared outwith the Council.
Section
The Council experienced significant technical issues with its website last week. The technical solution identified by our third part website and hosting suppliers required the website to be restored from a site back up the day prior to the technical issues being exhibited.
Investigations in to the impact of the website downtime and restoration have identified that some customers may have been able to access the site and make applications or requests for Council services during that time. As the site had to be restored to an earlier version, not all of these cases will have been recorded, although customers will not be aware of this and may even have received automatic acknowledgement emails.
A message will be issued today on social media, advising customers who may have made an enquiry, request or application through an online form on the Council website between Tuesday 21 September and Thursday 24 September to contact customer services on 0300 1234510 where customer service agents will take the details and determine if a case has already been created, or if this is a record that was impacted by the technical issues. The message will also be published on the homepage of the website to capture return visitors to the website who may not use social media.
Whilst the number of cases lost in the technical downtime is anticipated to be small, there is no way of establishing them without discussion with customers and the customer service team has been briefed to undertake this triage approach.
All available customer service resources will be reallocated to call handling to minimise any increase in waiting time as a result of increased call volume.
Discussions are ongoing with the third party website contractor to ensure mitigations are in place to prevent or minimise the impact of such downtime going forward.
