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Witness Name: Susan Campbell
Statement No.: WITNO7020100
Dated: 27/92, 2023
POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY
FIRST WITNESS STATEMENT OF SUSAN CAMPBELL
1, SUSAN CAMPBELL, will say as follows...
1.
This witness statement is made to assist the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry
with the matters set out in the Rule 9 Request dated 26 January 2023.
I am currently employed in adult social care as a Welfare Benefits Interviewer.
I have spent the last 20 years in various welfare to work and admin roles in
both the private and public sector. I was employed by Fujitsu around April
2000 through to around the middle of 2002, although I can’t remember the
exact duration and dates as it was over 20 years ago. I also had a period of
maternity leave during my employment. I started as a front-line technical
support analyst and quickly moved over to be as a senior technical support
analyst on the service control team.
I was trained by the Peritas team of trainers and other colleagues on the
Horizon system and there were training Horizon terminals scattered around
the help desk for front line analysts to use and practice on during calls and in
between, so they could see what the callers could see. There were some
issues with these terminals as they were not ‘live’ and didn’t always have
software updates that the live terminals had. I also received training on the
call logging and management system that was used at the time, as well as
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other systems relevant to the role. I cannot recall what the names of these
systems were.
. lonly spent a short time on the front line and went over to customer interface
(Service Control Team) quite quickly. I was one of two to three team members
responsible for dealing with complaints from post masters about different
aspects of the service provision and system issues. I also was assigned call
closure monitoring and looking at different call types and the length of time
they were left open and unresolved. During my time on the team I worked
alongside the second line team known as SMC and liaised with them
identifying certain call types that were being left on the call stacks and taking
time to be resolved. This collaboration resulted in both teams creating
additional training and awareness for front line analysts in order to deal with
the calls in a more effective and timely manner whilst gathering the relevant
information needed to help resolve the issues and manage the calls more
effectively, as we identified a training need. This training was delivered to
teams at our Stevenage and Manchester call centres. It was immediately put
in place and if I remember rightly was very effective. The team I was in was
responsible for complaints and call monitoring and other issues. Due to the
passage of time, I don’t recall all of the details, but do remember that the SMC
team were very much involved with the service control team. I left Fujitsu
shortly after the training was delivered. I didn’t receive many calls on the
service control team as I was analysing information, dealing with complaints,
or involved in training. I would make outbound calls and keep the post
masters and other staff updated on the progress of their complaint.
Complaints were resolved by interrogating the call content, looking at the
history and speaking to front line teams. Initially when I started taking calls
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from postmasters, I had training using the Horizon system with the Peritas
team of specialist trainers. We had access to a training version of the system
that the post masters would use. We also had bespoke systems and reporting
software to monitor calls and report on them. The team had a manager that
reported to the operations manager for the help desk. I don’t remember much
about the management structure. Most of the teams and individuals had a
good attitude towards the post office staff including post masters. There was a
lot going on and high turnover of staff as far as I recall.
. I believe that most of the postmasters received adequate support and their
needs were addressed to the best ability of the teams and individuals.
. I don’t recall bugs or defects at the time I was on the desk. I do however recall
there were a lot of non-polling issues for various reasons, which were
sometimes occurring when the cash accounts were being rolled over each
week. A lot of these were due to communication with the data centres and the
technical details were above my capability. I do recall there being issues when
there were revaluations (prices of stamps and other items going up in price),
as these had to be reflected on Horizon and there seemed to be problems
with the software. There was always an expectation of high call volumes
during and after revaluation. My understanding of these is very limited.
There was a lot of emphasis on the volume of calls and how best to manage
them, and the penalties for non-resolution of incidents. I can’t think of anything
else relevant. I found the Horizon system difficult to understand and
complicated to begin with, as did a lot of frontline staff. The desk was in ‘red
alert’ when I started but I am not sure of the exact explanation of this, I just
remember the words and urgency on the desk. There was a lot of changes to
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management during my time on the desk and there were different shift
patterns.
Statement of Truth
I believe the content of this statement to be true.
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