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Holiday period a busy time for council’s Customer Service Centre

Councils are the jack of all trades for the community. And Ipswich City Council is no different.

Council’s Customer Service Centre was busy over the Christmas-New Year period with calls for help or just general assistance.

Hundreds of Ipswich residents rung for a quick fix: broken pipes, fallen trees, noisy neighbours, bats or snakes too close to home, even hovering drones.

A spokesperson for council’s customer service team said the 20 daytime staff and the after-hours team were always keen to help out the community.

“We get a lot of varied enquiries, including many that fall outside of council’s services,” he said.

“But we do our best to help, or direct them to the most appropriate authority or organisation.

“We are often the first point of call for the city’s residents and we try to assist where we can.”

Customer Service Centre staff were asked to recall some of their funniest or those extremely odd requests from the public. These included:

• One customer was concerned that a drone was hovering over their property while they were sunbathing.

• Another reported a carpet python under a piece of carpet in the yard and asked council to remove it.

• Conversely, one resident asked if they could keep reptiles in the house.

• Another resident requested council to come and remove a dead flying fox in a backyard tree.

Other calls dealt with more typical issues, such as fixing faulty plumbing, clearing overgrown properties and roadworks.

“Most of the time our Customer Service Centre staff can assist customers on the spot or direct them to other council services,” he said.

“But, if we can’t deal with it immediately, we will direct the person elsewhere. Sometimes they just want some good advice, which we are only too happy to provide.”

Customer Service Centre staff are well trained and deal with all matters as politely and efficiently as possible.

New residents often reported they were pleasantly surprised at the amount of services offered by council.

These included online payment options, MyIpswich.com (where a resident can raise their own service request) and the popular Ipswich First web page.

Council has also expanded its customer service options with the new Council Connect service points at Springfield Central Library and the repurposed Mobile Library at Rosewood in Anzac Park, where customers can pay rates, register their animals, borrow books and so much more.

“We offer an amazing array of services and hopefully the community feels they get value for money for their rates,” he said.

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One Comment

  1. Would be great to know what the outcome was to those memorable calls, or where they were directed to if not handled by council.

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