Customer service operations, 2006-07

Customer service is a significant, important but often under-acknowledged profession in the NSW public sector.

Departments reported that 116,175 of their 256,449 full-time equivalent employees in June 2007 were front-line employees providing customer service. That is, almost half (45%) of the employees working in departments were working directly with customers, providing customer services, or indirectly by providing services and systems that assisted frontline employees.

There were major differences between small, medium and large departments, small department respondents reported an average of one-quarter of their employees were involved in the provision of front-line services to customers. Medium departments reported that on average nearly one-third (32%) of their employees were front-line-related employees; with on average nearly half (46%) of large departments had employees working in such roles.

Table 2: NSW public sector customer service employees (FTE), 2006-07