London Borough of Lewisham will initially use BT QueueBuster to manage enquiries relating to revenues and benefits, environmental issues and housing repairs. The borough's contact centre has 100 seats and processes approximately 1.5 million calls every year. BT is hosting the 'QueueBuster' solution for London Borough of Lewisham at its partner NetCall Telecom's Telehouse facility in London Docklands.
BT QueueBuster, which is based on technology from NetCall, gives customers the option to receive a return call rather than waiting on the line. The system holds the caller's place in the queue. Once he or she reaches the top, it generates an outbound call and connects the customer to an operator. BT QueueBuster is suitable for contact centres of all sizes.
London Borough of Lewisham began trialling BT QueueBuster in January. The objective was to find a solution that could more effectively manage queues, particularly at busy or peak periods such as Monday mornings or just after council tax bills are issued, for example.
During the trial period, the solution cut call queues by up to 90 per cent, improved the efficiency of contact centre staff by 10 per cent and reduced call abandon rates by 50 per cent. As a result, London Borough of Lewisham benefited from improved customer satisfaction and enhanced call handler morale.
"The success of the trial led directly to the decision to invest in BT QueueBuster," said Abi George, head of Service Development at London Borough of Lewisham. "We constantly strive to improve our services to residents and we identified our telephone service as an area that could benefit from the use of improved technology. BT QueueBuster improves our efficiency and effectiveness of our call handling. It also meets our corporate objective of providing quality services that our customers want."
"We believe BT QueueBuster and the enhanced customer satisfaction it brings will help us achieve these goals," she continued. "It will improve the overall service experience for customers by reducing not just call waiting times but also call costs. We can now set realistic customer expectations and guarantee, for example, that customers receive a call back within fifteen minutes of leaving the queue."
By opting for a hosted version of BT QueueBuster, London Borough of Lewisham effectively hands over the operation and management of the solution (queue management) to BT.
Inbound calls to London Borough of Lewisham are redirected onto the Telehouse server and outbound calls generated both to the PSTN and mobile phones on behalf of the borough. When required, the system removes calls from the main council queue and redirects them into BT QueueBuster.
"By going down the hosted route, we also benefit from a straightforward cost model, quick roll-out of the systems infrastructure and continuous access to the skills and expertise of BT's service and maintenance team," explains George.
Quelle: Publictechnology, 15.09.2005
