When the Council agreed upon its new service strategy in September 2004, it identified that a Contact Centre would be essential to improving service and driving up first time resolution rates. Seven months in planning, the Centre was opened on 4th April 2005 and today handles customer calls relating to Environmental Services (including pest control, bulky refuse and taxi license calls) as well as Revenue & Benefits services. The Centre currently has 9 (full time equivalent) agent positions - plus a 'bank' of additional Council staff who are being trained and will provide additional capacity and flexibility to allow the centre to handle 'spikes' in call traffic that occur during particularly busy periods (such as just after council tax bills have been sent out).
When it came to choosing a call handling system for the new centre, North East Derbyshire Council needed a solution with a track record of working effectively with its Northgate CRM software and that could also intelligently route calls to agents, monitor agent performance and provide high quality management information.
Following a tender process involving a number of technology vendors, the Council selected CallPlus contact centre technology from Macfarlane Telesystems. The Macfarlane CallPlus system answers, prioritises, routes and reports on all telephone traffic as well as helps management identify 'workflow' and 'profile' (i.e. matching agents skills to call types and volumes) requirements. It also integrates with both the Northgate CRM software and with the Council's main MITEL VoIP telephone switch and provides call recording, IVR and management information features.
The Centre has produced a number of immediate benefits for the Council and its customers. It's enabled the Council to take credit and debit card payments for bulky refuse, council tax and other services directly over the phone for the first time. It's also improved efficiency by enabling the Council to set up electronic diaries for its pest control and other environmental operators and has significantly improved first time call resolution rates.
The new Centre will be extending the range of services it handles to include domestic and commercial refuse collections and recycling - and ultimately hopes to cater for everything from leisure services to planning and anti-social behaviour services.
Mike Goodwin, Director of Corporate Services at North East Derbyshire Council believes that the success of the Centre is partly down to the emphasis that the Council has put on training and developing its people.
"We believe that to deliver great service you need great people - and we have invested heavily in the development of our people to ensure that they have the right skills, knowledge and motivation to ensure they can give our customers the best possible service.
It's also critical that we create a positive workplace environment and support our people through best-in-class technology. We've been extremely happy with the performance of the Macfarlane system and the flexibility it gives us. In terms of handling calls and providing the right management information, when we need it, it has been excellent" he adds.
"We are delighted to have been chosen for this prestigious project and delighted to see the centre get off to such a great start" said William Gray, Managing Director of Macfarlane Telesystems.
Quelle: CRM Today, 29.06.2005
