1. Quality Service Standards

Our Customer Charter outlines the nature and quality of service which customers can expect when interacting with the City Council. The Customer Charter is set out at Appendix 1.

In achieving our commitments in the Customer Charter, the City Council will endeavour to provide excellent customer service through:

Telephone service

• We will answer phones quickly and courteously
• We will give the information you ask for in a helpful way
• As far as possible, we will deal with your query at your first phone call
• We will direct your call to the most appropriate person as quickly as possible
• We will give you the name and phone number of the person dealing with your query in case you need to phone again
• If we cannot give you an answer immediately, we will take your details and phone you back at a time that is convenient for you and we will give you the name of the staff member who will call you back

Visitors to our public offices

• We will be polite, courteous and fair in our dealings with you
• We will deal with your enquiries as quickly as possible
• We will respect your privacy and provide private meeting facilities, if necessary
• We will make sure that queues are kept to a minimum. If, on occasion, queues are unavoidable, we will make this known and explain the reasons
• We will keep our public offices safe, clean and accessible for all
• As far as practicable, we will have hours of service delivery standardised

Written correspondence (e-mail & post)

• We will acknowledge correspondence within 5 working days and will endeavour to reply within 15 working days or less
• We will write as clearly and simply as possible, keeping technical terms to a minimum. If we use technical terms, we will explain them
• We will give a contact name, telephone number, email address and reference number in all written correspondence
• We will notify you by ‘out-of-office’ email response if a staff member is absent for more than 3 working days and provide you with an alternative contact

Applications

• We will acknowledge receipt of your application and process it within agreed timeframes
• We will make a decision on your application as quickly as possible
• We will deal with all applications consistently and fairly
• We will give reasons for our decisions
• We will tell you of your right to appeal and how to appeal our decision
• We will ensure that personal data acquired by us is used only for the purpose for which it was sought

Online Services

• We will make it easy to find information, forms and publications on our web-site
• We will make it easy to submit a comment, complaint or submission on our web-site
• We will make sure our web-site meets accessibility standards
• We will continue to expand our range of online services so you can access our services at a time and place that is convenient for you
• We will issue an immediate acknowledgement of queries, applications and payments received through our online services

Services in Irish

All customers have the right to do their business with us through the Irish or English language. Our objective is to offer and provide services through both languages.