The Group is open to all public sector organisations either running or planning a call or contact centre. The only restriction on membership is that only those organisations submitting quarterly performance data will have access to the benchmarking spreadsheet for that quarter.
Founding members
HARRY GULRAJANI is a Self Employed Consultant, being an Associate Member of RedQuadrant. Up until the end of 2010, he was Revenues and Benefits Manager at the London Borough of Southwark.
Harry started his Public Sector Career in 1990 as a Rebates Officer in Haringey, and remained in Haringey until April 2008. During these 18 years, Harry worked his way up through the ranks to be Benefits Manager, before taking up the challenge in 2001 in helping to establish the Councils Customer Services Division. As Finance and Performance Manager in Customer Services, Harry was key in establishing the performance metrics for the division, developing the Service Level Agreements with the Councils Client Services, and designing the recharge mechanisms by which the service was funded internally.
In 2008, Harry worked as a freelance Consultant specialising in advising on Call Centre performance metrics. Whilst undertaking his most recent position at Southwark Council, Harry continued to work as a freelance Consultant on Call Centre issues.
Harry was consulted with by the Cabinet Office in helping to establish the Performance Management Framework and was also a member of the Tell Us Once engine room. As well as being the Vice Chair of the Local Authority Contact Centre Benchmarking Group, Harry is a member of the Customer Services for London Steering Group.
KEITH PAULIN is Customer Access Development Manager at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
Keith started his customer services career in 1987 as a housing officer in Ealing and moved to Tower Hamlets in 1991 where he worked as both local and then area housing manager, delivering housing services to some of the most deprived estates in the country.
In 1999 he took up the challenge of establishing the Council’s first call centre, handling housing repairs calls. Over the next eight years he both ran the Repairs Help Centre day-to-day and took a key role in the development of customer services in the Borough before in 2007 becoming Customer Access Development Manager, heading a team driving forward the Council’s innovative Customer Access Strategy and introducing new solutions including workforce management and forecasting, automated customer satisfaction surveying and advanced face-to-face queue management.
Keith holds the Institute of Customer Service Innovations Award and the PRINCE2 Practitioner Qualification.
Keith chairs the LOCAL AUTHORITY CONTACT CENTRE BENCHMARKING GROUP.
