Local e-Government National CRM Programme CRM CUSTOMER CONTACT CENTRE GUIDE
Version:
Version 1.0 Final Date:
March 2004
Purpose of Document:
The purpose of this document is to provide help advice and implementation guidel ines to
Table of Contents 1 INTRODUCTION... ... 5 1.1 OVERVIEW ... ... 5 1.2 READER... ... 6
1.3 RELATED PRODUCTS & ADDITIONAL READING ... ... 6
2 BACKGROUND... ... 8
2.1 THE PURPOSE AND ORIGINS OF THIS DOCUMENT ... ... 8
2.2 DEFINITION OF A CONTACT CENTRE ... ... 8
2.3 THE LINK BETWEEN CONTACT CENTRES AND CRM... ... 9
2.4 CALL CENTRES IN LOCAL AND CENTRAL GOVERNMENT... ... 9
2.4.1 Walk-in shops and telephone Contact Centres... ... 9
3 A HISTORY OF LOCAL AUTHORITY CONTACT CENTRES ... ... 11
3.1 WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN T WORK ... ... 11
3.1.1 Outsourcing ... ... 13
3.1.2 Partnering... ... 13
4 CURRENT CONTACT CENTRE TECHNOLOGY... ... 14
4.1 INTRODUCTION... ... 14
4.2 KEY COMPONENTS OF A CONTACT CENTRE... ... 14
4.2.1 Overview ... ... 14
4.2.2 The Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) ... ... 15
4.2.3 The Management System ... ... 16 4.2.4 Business Application ... ... 17 4.3 ADDITIONAL COMPONENTS ... ... 17 4.4 OVERVIEW ... ... 18
4.4.1 Interactive Voice Response (IVR) ... ... 18 4.4.2 Voice Recording ... ... 18 4.4.3 Workforce Management... ... 19 4.4.4 E-mail Server... ... 19
4.4.5 Web Chat Server/SMS Server ... ... 19
4.4.6 CTI Computer Telephone Integration... ... 19
4.4.7 Outbound Dialler to Automate the Placing of Outbound Calls... ... 20
5 EVOLVING TECHNOLOGIES... ... 21
5.1 INTRODUCTION... ... 21
5.2 PC SERVER BASED CONTACT CENTRES... ... 21
5.3 VOICE OVER IP OR IP TELEPHONY ... ... 23
5.4 HOSTED CONTACT CENTRE ... ... 24
6 IMPACT ON CRM... ... 26
6.1 OVERVIEW ... ... 26
6.2 MULTI-CHANNEL CONTACT HANDLING ... ... 26
7 FUTURE PROOFING... ... 27
7.1 INTRODUCTION... ... 27
7.2 GENERAL GUIDANCE ... ... 27
8 CONTACT CENTRE PROCUREMENT... ... 29
8.1 PURCHASING THE TECHNOLOGY ... ... 29
8.2 SUPPLIERS... ... 29
8.3 CONTRACTS... ... 29
8.4 COSTINGS... ... 30
8.5 EXAMPLE FIGURES ... ... 32
9 HOW TO GET STARTED... ... 35 9.1 RESEARCH ... ... 35 9.2 BENCHMARKING ... ... 35 9.3 STRATEGY ... ... 35 9.4 ACCOMMODATION ... ... 35 9.5 PEOPLE ... ... 36 9.6 TECHNOLOGY ... ... 36 9.7 PLANNING ... ... 37 9.8 IMPLEMENTATION... ... 37 10 CASE STUDIES... ... 38
10.1 LONDON BOROUGH OF BRENT ... ... 38
10.1.1 Origins of the LB Brent Contact Centre... ... 38 10.1.2 Staff ... ... 38 10.1.3 Technology... ... 39 10.1.4 Service ... ... 39 10.1.5 Customer Satisfaction ... ... 40 10.1.6 Hindsight ... ... 40
10.2 LONDON BOROUGH OF TOWER HAMLETS... ... 41
10.2.1 Origins of the LBTH - Housing Repairs Contact Centre ... ... 41 10.2.2 Staff ... ... 41 10.2.3 Technology... ... 42 10.2.4 Service ... ... 42 10.2.5 Customer Satisfaction ... ... 43 10.2.6 Hindsight ... ... 43
10.3 EAST RIDING DISTRICT COUNCIL... ... 43
10.3.1 Origins of the East Riding of Yorkshire Contact Centre... ... 44 10.3.2 Staff ... ... 44 10.3.3 Technology... ... 44 10.3.4 Service ... ... 45 10.3.5 Customer Satisfaction ... ... 46 10.3.6 Hindsight ... ... 46
10.4 WEST LANCS DISTRICT COUNCIL ... ... 46
10.4.1 Origins of the West Lancs. Contact Centre... ... 47 10.4.2 Staff ... ... 48 10.4.3 Technology... ... 48 10.4.4 Service ... ... 48 10.4.5 Customer Satisfaction ... ... 49 10.4.6 Hindsight ... ... 49
10.5 HULL CITY COUNCIL... ... 50
10.5.1 Origins of the Hull City Council (Hull CC) Hull Connect Call Centre... ... 50
10.5.2 Staff - Kingston Communications (KC) ... ... 51 10.5.3 Staff Hull CC... ... 52 10.5.4 Technology... ... 52 10.5.5 Service ... ... 52 10.5.6 Customer Satisfaction ... ... 53 10.5.7 Hindsight ... ... 53 11 BIBLIOGRAPHY... ... 54 11.1 RECOMMENDED READING... ... 54
11.1.1 Central Office of Information (COI) ... ... 54
11.1.2 FITLOG ... ... 54
ANNEXE 1. AUTHORS, CONTRIBUTORS & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS... ... 55
APPENDIX A. KEY CONTRIBUTORS ... ... 55
APPENDIX B. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS... ... 55
ANNEXE 2. GLOSSARY OF TERMS... ... 56
ANNEXE 3. CONTRACTING A MYSTERY SHOPPER... ... 58
APPENDIX C. ISSUES TO CONSIDER... ... 58
APPENDIX D. ISSUES FOR TRAINING ... ... 60
ANNEXE 4. METADATA ... ... 62
INTRODUCTION OVERVIEW
The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) established an £80 million progra mme of
National Projects whose aim is to bring together councils, central government, t he private
sector and others to define and deliver projects and national Local e-Government solutions.
The CRM National Project has the following objective: To enable councils to explo it CRM
in order to transform customer service, by providing a comprehensive toolkit by mid-2004 .
The Contact Centre Guide (CCG) is designed to assist Local Authorities to plan, procure,
and implement Contact Centres.
local authorities can use it as a checkpoint guideline document to assess their own
internal work
local Authorities can use it as a kick-off document to plan for their implementa tion
the product will enable more efficient management of resources through the guideline document being available and Local authorities not having to reinvent the
wheel
by providing an established framework in which to work, LA s will be aware of the requirements and constraints of a contact Centre
the product will evolve as it is used, and it will be under version control and release
The product is primarily aimed at LA s that are involved in: planning to implement a CRM system
developing a Contact Centre for the first time upgrading or merging existing Contact Centres
providing both walk-in shops and telephone Contact Centres as customer access points
This product has been developed from existing best practices that have been deve loped by
key technology suppliers in the UK local Authority market place local Authority case studies
the LA Contact Centre benchmark group information provided by the COI and FITLOG
information supplied by partners within the CRM National Programme READER
This Product is intended to be used by teams and individuals involved in the imp lementation
of customer Contact Centres, including: Senior Business Managers
IT Managers
Programme Managers Project Managers Business Analysts
Change Support Managers Contact Centre Managers
RELATED PRODUCTS & ADDITIONAL READING
This document should be read in conjunction with the documents listed below. Ful l
references are in section 12 of this document. FITLOG calling Local Government
Making Contact
And the following documents from the National CRM Programme library: P1.0 CRM Vision
TS3.2 CRM Customer Care Standards TS3.1 CRM Interaction Standards
B3.0 CRM Support and Operation Guidelines B4.0 CRM User Requirements Specification
BACKGROUND
THE PURPOSE AND ORIGINS OF THIS DOCUMENT
The inspiration for this document came from a number of Local Authorities that p articipated
in the Proofs of Concept (POC) process when the CRM User Requirements Specificat ion B
4.0 and the CRM System Functional Specification B2.0 products were being develop ed.
DEFINITION OF A CONTACT CENTRE
A Contact Centre is a managed group of people (agents) who handle enquiries that are
delivered to them, over the phone, or electronically. These enquiries are passed to them by
some form of queuing system, that can prioritise which enquiries are to be handl ed first, and
can also prioritise the order in which agents are chosen to handle the enquiries . The
effectiveness with which the queuing system and the agents handle these enquirie s is
monitored, both in real time and historically, so that the performance of the Co ntact Centre
can be checked against specific targets, and can be improved over time. In addit ion the
agents are provided with some form of business application (i.e. CRM) to allow t hem to
record, manage and track the enquiry.
There are no particular size constraints on Contact Centres. They can be as smal l as 4 or 5
agents up to many hundreds. There is also no reason for all the agents to be in the same
room or building. Modern technology means that the agents can be in geographical ly
dispersed locations, as long as they can still be managed as a group.
This definition is important as it differentiates a Contact Centre from an offic e, which may
have a number of people handling calls as well, but where there are no queuing o r
monitoring systems, and no overall management of the activities of the people in the office.
Historically, Contact Centres only handled phone calls (call centres) but nowada ys they
THE LINK BETWEEN CONTACT CENTRES AND CRM
During the development of the technical specifications products, within the Nati onal CRM
Programme, Local Authorities made the point very strongly that introducing CRM i nto a
local authority would, in practice, go hand in hand with the introduction and us e of Contact
Centres and Walk-in Shops. It was therefore appropriate for the National CRM Pro gramme
to develop a guide that sought to clarify the process for setting up a successfu l Contact
Centre. The central theme of the National CRM Programme is to introduce the conc ept of
delivering a coherent and consistent level of service across all customer access channels
whether that access be via the Internet, a telephone Contact Centre or face to f ace in a
walk-in shop. The technology, and many of the processes used in a telephone Cont act
Centre are the same as those that are used in a walk-in shop. Indeed, several Lo cal
Authorities make use of spare capacity in the walk-in shop as overflow for the t elephone
Contact Centre and vice versa; i.e. they share the same CRM application, telepho ny
system, data network and desktop infrastructure. CALL CENTRES IN LOCAL AND CENTRAL GOVERNMENT
There appear to be as many different types of call centres operating in the publ ic sector as
there are different organisations and departments. Central government, almost by definition,
tends to have very large centres that deal with customers nationwide. However, t hese
centres generally provide a comparatively narrow range of services to both incom ing callers
and when making outgoing calls to customers. Local government call centres, by c ontrast,
tend by their nature to cater for the local community and when centralised can o ffer a very
wide range of services but mainly to incoming callers. Traditionally, in local g overnment, call
centres tend to have been tacked on to individual service areas in an attempt to h andle the
incoming enquiries. These centres range in size from a few people sat round a de sk with a
number of phones, to fairly large set-ups with telephony routed via ACD systems. CRM is
key to the creation of a centralised Contact Centre operation. Walk-in shops and telephone Contact Centres
The push from Government to e-enable access to service provision, together with the
National CRM Programme, is focussing attention on access routes into Local Autho rities.
one
numbers and had to try and decide which service they required, is giving way to more
coherent access routes via Walk-in Shops and centralised telephone Contact Centr es, plus,
of course, access via the internet, e-mail and text messaging.
Many Local Authorities still seem to view these routes as totally separate. Howe ver, a more
coherent approach is possible with the assistance of good data networks, well de signed
telephony links, plus CRM. This is especially true of walk-in shops and telephon e Contact
Centres. To operate effectively they must share the same technology. All advisor s in a
Local Authority should access the same CRM system to record and access customer records and case histories, telephone calls should be routed via the same teleph ony system
and they should all have access to the same backend applications. Only in this w ay can
service delivery become fully coordinated and the customer receive the same qual ity of
service, whether it is face to face, over the telephone, or via any of the other electronic
access methods provided.
The case histories contained in this document outline some of the different ways Local
Authorities have addressed these issues. Many of them, in essence, treat the pro vision of
service through walk-in shops or via the telephone as one. In the East Riding, f or instance,
the Contact Centres are distributed around the authority s area but they are linke d so as to
provide one large virtual centre. Thus staff can be moved between the walk-in sh op and the
telephone Contact Centre, to meet demand.
In this document we will treat either access route as if it were one whilst reco gnising that the
customer care skills required for each may differ, but the technology used shoul d be the
A HISTORY OF LOCAL AUTHORITY CONTACT CENTRES
The move towards centralised contact points where customers can gain access to t he
whole range of Local Authority provided services can be traced back to 1993 when the
London Borough of Brent established the first (recorded) walk-in shop under the banner of
the One Stop Shop. This experiment was deemed successful and was repeated at a number of other locations in the borough and has now been replicated in many oth er
Authorities. It is more difficult to pinpoint the beginnings of telephone Contac t Centres in
Local Government but certainly by the mid 1990 s several authorities had recognise d that
many customers could not get to the walk-in shops, either because of the opening times or
the geographical distances were too great. It was also recognised that many peop le prefer
to make enquiries via the phone, and by doing so greatly reducing the cost of se rvice
provision. The emergence of CRM in local government, over the past three to four years,
has enabled local authorities to provide a much greater level of coordination an d coherence
between the access methods. WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN T WORK
The research undertaken for this product shows quite clearly that there is no on e right way
to implement a Contact Centre. Several different approaches have been tried and often a
particular approach has been used because it was a good fit with the needs and requirements of that authority at that time. Local Authorities embarking on a pr oject to
establish a Contact Centre should examine both the short term and the likely lon g term
needs for the centre since the two may not be directly compatible. For instance, it may
seem to be a very attractive short-term solution to outsource the Contact Centre in order
that it is up and running very quickly. However, if the long-term aim is to impr ove flexibility
and reduce costs, outsourcing may not prove to be the best long-term solution. Developing an in-house solution
Many authorities have developed their own in-house solution, designed to meet th eir own
needs and budget. These Contact Centres vary from the very small, four-person ce ntre, up
to a large centre with 200 or more seats . All these, regardless of size, faced the same
Staff
Please refer to the FITLOG Calling Local Government and Making Contact documents for further information. (References are in section 11.1.2 of this document).
The research via our case studies highlights many common themes. Invariably and especially at start-up Contact Centre staff are recruited internally from within the authority.
The key selection criteria used tends towards knowledge of one or more service a reas and
a willingness to work in a Contact Centre. This is the opposite to the approach taken in
commercial centres where the key selection criteria is experience in customer ca re
techniques with on the job product training coming later.
Initial training appears to take around two weeks but with ongoing training and coaching to
ensure progression, consistency and that the information provided is up to date.
Local authority Contact Centres, generally have a very low turnover of staff, us ually much
less than 10% pa. This compares well with commercial centres that often have tur nover
rates nearer 50% pa. This high level of staff retention has been put down to a c ombination
of:
varied and interesting work staff are often involved in developing services good ongoing training schemes
good working conditions
much higher levels of pay compared with commercial centres
good Local Authority conditions of employment; hours, pension, holidays, flexibl e
working, etc.
Technology is covered more fully in section 4. Home workers
A few Local Authorities are experimenting with home workers to augment the main Contact
Centre staff. This adds flexibility when planning for extended opening hours and for
potentially busy periods. It also enables authorities to employ groups such as d isabled
people who would find it difficult to travel and single mothers who cannot affor d child care.
Modern technology, especially the use of IP based systems and broadband telephon y,
enables home workers to have access to the same systems at similar speeds as if they
Outsourcing
From the research we have done it would appear that it is the larger authorities that favour
outsourcing. The clear advantages to outsourcing are: speed of start up
freedom from staffing issues other than those relating to potential loss of jobs within
the authority
independence from many of the technology issues other than those relating to networking back into the authority.
clearly defined and known costs. Partnering
Liverpool City Council is a good example of partnering. The council has partnere d with BT
and has established a range of programmes including the setting up of Liverpool Direct
Limited which is an independent company, jointly owned by Liverpool City Council and BT.
Liverpool Direct operates the city s telephone and walk-in Contact Centres on beha lf of the
council. The advantages of this type of relationship are: the sharing of costs
access to BT s technology and technical know how
access to BT s knowledge of operating large call centres access to the council for staff recruitment
CURRENT CONTACT CENTRE TECHNOLOGY INTRODUCTION
This section looks at the most common forms of Contact Centre technology. Howeve r, it
should be noted that there has been a great deal of change in Contact Centre tec hnology
over the last two years. This has resulted in a variety of alternatives to the t raditional
technology used. The definition of current Contact Centre technology is therefor e taken to
mean the technology that is in place in the majority of call centres. This is pr imarily the
handling of calls delivered over the public telephone network, although there ma y also be
the handling of web chats, e-mails and text messaging.
The alternative ways of implementing a Contact Centre are discussed in section 6 .
KEY COMPONENTS OF A CONTACT CENTRE Overview
A Contact Centre requires three main components:
a queuing system (an ACD or Automatic Call Distributor) a management system
a business application to allow agents to handle the enquiry In addition to these components, the Contact Centre may include:
an IVR (Interactive Voice Response unit) to automate the handling of calls Voice Recording Equipment to record calls
Workforce Management
CTI computer telephone integration to allow computer systems to control calls Outbound Dialler to automate the placing of outbound calls
e-mail server
Ordinary Phones PSTN Network Link Business Application Hosts Agents PABX ACD Management System
Simple Contact Centre
The Automatic Call Distributor (ACD)
The ACD is the core of any Contact Centre. It is responsible for taking outside calls,
placing them in a queue and then delivering each call to the next available agen t. This
means that there are more telephone lines coming into an ACD than there are agen ts
available to handle the calls. (As opposed to a conventional telephone system (P ABX)
where there are usually fewer incoming lines than there are phones on desks.) Ty pically,
the ratio of inbound calls to agents is of the order 5 : 1. There are a number o f ways in
which an ACD can be implemented, but typically it is a dedicated piece of hardwa re.
Simple Contact Centre Configuration
Figure 1:above shows a typical configuration for a Contact Centre. Calls arrive from the
public phone network (PSTN) and are directed to the main telephone switch (PABX) . Calls
that are destined to be handled by the Contact Centre are passed through the PAB X and
onto the ACD. The ACD then decides which agent should handle the call. The figur e also
shows the PC server running the management systems, and the business application hosts.
Call Queuing
Within the ACD there are a number of queues which direct calls to agents with sp ecific
skills, or who work in particular departments. The ACD is able to choose which q ueue to
put a call into by looking at the number dialled by the caller, or by offering t he caller a
number of choices. These choices are handled by a component of the ACD called th e
Auto Attendant, which is a very simple IVR system that can be configured to supp ort a
simple menu system.
The queuing system monitors the activity of the agents and passes calls in the q ueue to the
most appropriate agent to handle the call. In addition the ACD will have a set o f business
rules to say how calls held in queue will be treated. These rules will allow the ACD to move
calls to another queue if this queue is filling up too fast, etc. Part of the ma nagement
system of the ACD will be a programming tool to specify this behaviour. Multi-Channel Queuing
In Contact Centres where contacts arrive via more than one channel, the ACD func tionality
has to be able to handle different media. It would typically be extended to incl ude e-mail,
web cat, and SMS texts. These other media would have servers (see below) that re ceive
the messages and then request a free agent to handle the enquiry. The ACD would use its
business rules to decide the correct agent, prevent them receiving any further p hone calls
and then notify the server that it can pass the message to that agent to handle.
The Management System
The management system is used to control the ACD, and to report on its activitie s.
Typically it is PC based and has a number of applications accessible through a c ommon
interface. These applications perform three main functions:
Specifying the hardware configuration of the ACD, e.g. how the inbound and outbound telephone lines are used and where each agent telephone is. It would also allow the creation of agent ID s so that agents can log on to the ACD Specifying the way the calls are routed by the queuing system. Typically this wi ll
be some form of programming/scripting language
Reporting on ACD activity, e.g. how many calls arrive at the switch, how many are rejected, how many calls go to each queue, how fast calls are answered, how many calls are answered within the Contact Centre s target times, etc. This
reporting will be provided both in real time so that supervisors can take action if
targets are not being met and historically so that senior management can analyse the types of calls that are received
Functions 1 and 2 are usually the responsibility of dedicated Voice staff. Funct ion 3 is
usually handled by the Contact Centre manager and/or the agent supervisors. Business Application
In order for the agents to process the enquiries received in the Contact Centre they need
some form of business application. These applications are usually linked to the rest of the
business systems within an organisation, and allow the agents to access customer details.
Where a CRM system has been implemented, then the business application would be part
of the CRM system. Usually the business application is not connected to the ACD in any
way, but it is possible to link it to the ACD through some form of Computer Tele phone
Integration (CTI). This allows the agents to control the calls they receive from the
application, and to use information received from the ACD (or IVR) to help handl e the call.
CTI is discussed in section 4.4.6. ADDITIONAL COMPONENTS Ordinary Phones PSTN IVR Network Link Business Application Hosts Agents PABX ACD Management System Internet E-Mail Web/SMS Voice Recording CTI
OVERVIEW
The technology to enable a basic Contact Centre to start operating is quite simp le. Once
the ACD is in place, with its management system and associated business applicat ion,
agents can start handling calls, and their performance can be measured. However there
are additional components that can be added to allow certain processes to be aut omated,
or for other types of contact to be handled. Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
One of the most common components to add in to a Contact Centre is an IVR. This allows
certain calls to be automated so that they no longer require agent involvement. The IVR
allows a caller to select items from menus, and to enter data through the phone keypad or
by talking. The IVR in turn can respond with recorded text, text to speech trans lation, and
can access external databases. For example a caller might be enquiring about a h ousing
repair. The caller could supply the job number for the work, and the IVR could a ccess the
repairs database and speak back the current state of the work, or details of an appointment
for an engineer to call. Voice Recording
Voice Recording is also a common component in the Contact Centre. It has three m ain
functions:
Ensuring the quality of the dialogue with the customer
Supporting the training of agents by allowing supervisors and agents to play back good and bad calls and then analysing them to find out what
differentiates them
There is a third function of dispute resolution, where every call is recorded. I n
addition some systems provide a panic button that allows agents to record a malicious, abusive, or emergency call such as a bomb threat.
Typically not all calls are recorded. The Voice Recording is limited to a percen tage of all
calls, say 10%, as this reduces the overall cost and management of the systems. The systems can be configured in a number of ways depending on what is being mon itored,
e.g. to record specific agents, to record specific types of call, or to record a random
Workforce Management
Workforce Management systems take data from the ACD, together with historical da ta and
use this to calculate the most effective shift patterns for the agents. They als o provide
information during the day, on how to re-organise shifts if agents are absent, o r if the
number of contacts being received varies significantly from that expected E-mail Server
For other contact types additional servers are employed. E-mails will be passed to an email
server. The queuing system will then select agents to receive the messages for processing. Usually the agent is able to select a number of pre-written response s to allow
the e-mails to be responded to quickly, and to allow a consistent style and form at. The email
system will also be able to scan outgoing messages for unacceptable language. In some systems the e-mail server will be able to scan incoming messages and wil l
automatically send responses where the content matches certain criteria. Web Chat Server/SMS Server
Agents can interact directly with customers over the Internet using a chat progr am. The
customer can enter questions and responses in a window accessed from the website .
These inputs are passed to the agent who can also respond by typing. Like the e-mail
server there is usually a set of pre-written replies to allow agents to respond quickly. The
agent may also be able to push web pages to the customer to show them extra information held on the website.
(Web chat is popular with people calling from an office or shared environment, a s it allows a
much more private dialogue than is possible over the phone.)
The SMS server works in a similar way, but uses mobile phone text messaging. Thi s has
proved to be popular amongst the teenage and early 20 s age groups. CTI Computer Telephone Integration
In order to allow the various components to interact with the ACD so that agents can be
allocated to handle different types of contact, some kind of Computer Telephone Integration
(CTI) is required. This is usually provided by an additional server that connect s to the ACD
and allows other computer servers to control the way the ACD works. This can eit her be
used by the business application to control calls for the agent, i.e. automatica lly dialling
calls, answering calls, and screen popping caller information; or CTI can be use d by the
servers to request a free agent to handle an e-mail or web-chat request. Outbound Dialler to Automate the Placing of Outbound Calls
The outbound dialler is used where a large number of outbound calls are needed. There
are essentially two types of dialler: progressive and predictive. The progressiv e dialler
works its way through a list of numbers to dial. When someone answers, the call is passed
to a free agent. The progressive dialler will only dial when an agent is free to handle the
call. The predictive dialler dials numbers at a fast enough rate so that someone answers a
call at the same time as an agent becomes free. (It predicts when an agent will become
EVOLVING TECHNOLOGIES INTRODUCTION
The section above detailed the typical components of a traditional Contact Centr e, along
with some of the additional elements that would be found in more advanced multi-channel
Contact Centres. Historically, these Contact Centres have been fairly large, any thing from
50 agents up to many hundreds, and the individual components have been sourced f rom
specialist suppliers. For example, there were specialist ACD suppliers and separ ate
specialist IVR suppliers. A Contact Centre would have been built by sourcing the se
individually and than integrating them. However over the last two years a number of
changes have taken place in the way Contact Centres are implemented: PC Based solutions have been developed which are cost effective for small numbers of agents, down to as few as 8 or 10 agents
The underlying technology can be based on Voice over IP (VoIP) or IP telephony rather than TDM digital voice connections
The Contact Centre can be based on hosted technology that is remote from the Contact Centre.
This section examines each of these options. PC SERVER BASED CONTACT CENTRES
The traditional ACD was based on dedicated hardware from a specialist supplier. This
equipment used hardware and software developed by the supplier specifically to p rovide
ACD functionality. These systems were very reliable, often with dual hardware sy stems to
ensure they were fault tolerant, and used specialist operating systems tailored for use in the
ACD. However, these ACD s were relatively expensive, and were only cost effective for
agent numbers of 50 and above.
Recently a number of ACD s have been developed based on PC server hardware. These are not quite so reliable as the traditional ACD as they use general purpose ope rating
systems, but are much more cost effective. In addition, a number of functions th at were
provided by separate components in a traditional Contact Centre have been integr ated onto
the one PC server. This means that you will get the ACD, IVR, e-mail and web cha t
functions all supported on the same server. PSTN Voice and Fax Application Hosts IVR E-Mail Internet E-Mail and Web ACD
PC Server Based Systems
The advantages of the PC Server based solution are: Cost effective for small numbers of agents
Low integration costs, as all the necessary functionality may be contained in th e
one PC server
Lower support costs, as the PC server can be supported by existing IT staff, as opposed to dedicated Voice systems technicians
Disadvantages:
The functionality may be more restricted than the dedicated ACD s
The PC is inherently less reliable than the dedicated hardware, although this may not be significant
Not all the PC based ACD providers are experts in call centres More prone to Virus infection
VOICE OVER IP OR IP TELEPHONY
The use of Voice over IP or IP telephony within a Contact Centre is becoming mor e
common. In this architecture, both the voice connections and the data connection s within
the Contact Centre are carried over the data network, as opposed to the separate voice and
data networks in a traditional Contact Centre. Telephone Network Internet Customer Internet Gateway IP-ACD IP-IVR IP-Recording E-Mail Web Chat Internet Remote Agent Agents With IP Phones Contact Centre Data Network IP based system
This has a number of advantages over a traditional Contact Centre: The Contact Centre only requires one network to carry data
Management of the Contact Centre is simplified, as the use of IP to deliver voic e
to the phones means they can be anywhere on the network. (Traditional ACDs have the phone hard wired to specific ports on the ACD. This means that moving a phone can be a lengthy process.) There is no need to manage a separate
voice network
It is easier to integrate other media types such as e-mail and web-chat, that ar e
The Contact Centre can be easily distributed across a number of physical locations as long as these have an IP network connection between them Disadvantages:
Not all VoIP or IP telephony suppliers can offer as sophisticated an ACD as the traditional suppliers
The data network needs to be very carefully designed to ensure there is enough bandwidth to guarantee decent voice quality in the Contact Centre
A failure of the data network will bring down both the data networking and the voice capability. The phones will stop working
There need to be special voice gateways to connect the Contact Centre to the PSTN
HOSTED CONTACT CENTRE
The technology made available by VoIP allows the Contact Centre to be remote fro m the
agents. This enables service providers, such as BT and Cable and Wireless, to of fer
Contact Centre services where they host all the hardware. All that is needed is a VPN
connection from the host hardware to the Contact Centre, where all the voice is delivered
over IP. In addition, it is possible for the agent application to be hosted as w ell and to be
delivered to the agent over the same connection. Typically, these services are o ffered on a
per agent/per day cost which allows a Contact Centre to be set up with minimum c apital
IP-IVR Gateway
Customers Service Provider Contact Centre PSTN
PSTN Voice and Data over IP
IP-ACD VPN
Outsourced system Advantages:
Low capital cost to set-up
Low support costs. The hardware and software is supported by the service provider
Flexible solution, depending on contract, if there are large variations in the number of agents required through the year
Disadvantages
There is less scope for customising the solution offered, particularly if the se rvice
provider is providing the application as well
The solutions tend to be more expensive than capital purchase as the size of the Contact Centre gets above 50 seats. (See section 8.4)
The local authority is dependent on the quality of service achieved by the servi ce
IMPACT ON CRM OVERVIEW
The Contact Centre is one of the main areas of an organisation where it is possi ble to see
CRM in action. One of the key requirements of CRM is that the business applicati on and
the agent know with whom they are dealing, so that the appropriate service can b e offered.
In a Contact Centre every enquiry received can be identified in some way:
Particular types of telephone callers can be given specific phone numbers to cal l
Telephone calls can be identified by using an IVR to ask the caller to identify themselves in some way
E-mails already have the sender information contained in them
Web chats can require the caller to provide identification information before th e
connection is made
The fact that all the enquiries can be identified means that the queuing mechani sm (ACD)
can then route the caller to the most appropriate agent to handle the enquiry. H owever, this
means that the ACD must be connected in some way to a database that identifies w hat
service a particular caller needs. There needs to be some way, therefore, of int egrating the
CRM system with the Contact Centre ACD. MULTI-CHANNEL CONTACT HANDLING
For organisations that are looking to allow customers to submit enquiries across a range of
media, a multi-channel Contact Centre is key to allowing these different media t o be
monitored. A properly integrated Contact Centre will provide the management tool s to
monitor voice calls, e-mails and web chats and will set service level targets fo r these. The
queuing system will then be able to prioritise how each enquiry is handled to en able these
service level targets to be met.
From the perspective of CRM, the key requirement is that the agents handling the enquiry,
whatever the channel, must be able to access the customer data, and that any act ions they
FUTURE PROOFING INTRODUCTION
Where systems are being considered it is important to consider carefully the fun ctionality
required across the lifetime of the Contact Centre. As there are a number of com peting
technologies available at the moment there needs to be a good match with both cu rrent and
future requirements. Areas that need to be looked at include:
Maximum size of the Contact Centre. It should be clearly specified what the likely maximum size of the Contact Centre will be. This is essential to ensure that the ACD chosen is not over or under specified. For example, PC based systems tend to be best suited for between 10 and 100 agents. VoIP solutions have so far mainly been used for 100 to 1000 agent systems
Will the Contact Centre be multi-channel? If it is only intended to handle phone calls in the Contact Centre, or if there is no intention of having agents handle a
mixture of e-mail, web chat and voice, then the system supplied will be simpler. There can then be separate systems for voice and for the other media types Is there only going to be one Contact Centre, or will there be multiple sites? I f
there are multiple sites, then VoIP will probably be the most cost effective way to
implement a solution
Is the Local Authority able to support type of network needed to provide the bandwidth necessary for VoIP?
GENERAL GUIDANCE
The two areas that are most important in choosing the systems are:
Voice over IP/ IP telephony. This is slowly gaining prominence for Contact Centres. If you are looking at a greenfield site, or a new Contact Centre, then a
system based around VoIP should certainly be on any shortlist. All the key suppliers in the market are able to offer VoIP solutions. VoIP also has the benefit of being essentially location independent, so if one is considering home working then it will also be a good solution
PC Based solutions. There is a wide range of PC based solutions available. These range from smaller versions of existing systems from established
suppliers, through to systems designed by new suppliers. The key factor here is that there are many different ways to implement ACD systems on a PC, and
very careful evaluation of a PC solution is required before selecting one. Some of the suppliers in the PC market place have little real experience of Contact Centres, which means that their management and queuing software doesn t
offer enough functionality to properly run the Contact Centre. Additionally you need to be sure that the supplier will be around in a few years time!
CONTACT CENTRE PROCUREMENT PURCHASING THE TECHNOLOGY
There are three key elements to purchasing this technology:
Produce a good business specification. As mentioned above, it is essential that the business strategies and requirements are specified accurately. Once this has been done the business specification can be converted into a Tender
document that will enable the selection of the correct supplier. Without a good specification supplier evaluation will not be feasible.
Only work with suppliers who have existing, demonstrable customers who are using the technology in a similar way to the way it is intended to be used, by your Local Authority.
If the technical expertise is not available in-house, an external consultant sho uld
be involved to help evaluate responses. The implementation of a Contact Centre is a complex mixture of technical, operational, and people issues. Without some assistance at this early stage it is very easy to end up with a solution that fails to deliver sufficient performance, or is not scalable, or re lies on
an obsolescent technology. SUPPLIERS
There are many suppliers who can provide this technology. However there are a sm aller
number of key suppliers who have been providing these systems for a number of ye ars.
Wherever possible a single supplier solution should be sought. Getting all the c omponent
parts of a Contact Centre to work together is not easy. If components are purcha sed
individually, then the local authority is taking on the role of a Systems Integr ator, and will
need to ensure that it possesses the relevant skills. CONTRACTS
Contracts for Contact Centre equipment and software have few requirements that m ake
them different from other types of computer hardware and software. The key area to focus
on is support in the situation of system failure. As it will be the major interf ace with
customers a fast response time will be required. This typically needs to be bett er than a
four- hour response, during the opening hours of the Contact Centre. It will als o be
important to ensure that support activity can take place out of hours to ensure that the
centre can operate the next morning. Whether to buy the equipment, lease it, or opt for a
hosted solution, is usually a financial decision. The functionality available is not likely to
differ radically, so this is mainly a decision for purchasing. COSTINGS
This section gives two examples of costings for a multi-channel Contact Centre. These costings have been put together from budgetary estimates from three differ ent
suppliers and are intended only as a guide.
The exact costings would depend on the specific implementation required. The costings were based on a requirement for the following functionality: 20, 50 agents using IP Phones or IP enabled PCs
support for Voice from PSTN, and VoIP from the Internet support for Web Chat and E-mail handling
CTI interface on the agent PCs multi-media recording
CRM business application
The three suppliers represented three different approaches to implementing an AC D.
a supplier which was dedicated to producing ACD and multi-channel queuing solutions;
a PABX supplier which could supply ACD functionality on its PABX; a hosted solution based around VoIP.
The figures include the connection to the Internet required to support web chat and e-mail,
as well as setup and ongoing maintenance costs, and the CRM business application costs.
If only some of the functionality is required, for example for a telephone only system, it is
EXAMPLE FIGURES 20 Agents
HOW TO GET STARTED RESEARCH
Take time to look around the market and see what is on offer and what fits in wi th your
particular requirements. If you are at all unsure about crucial aspects such as the Contact
Centre environment or the technology, call in an expert to advise. BENCHMARKING
Measurement of performance improvements is essential if continued buy in from th e
authority and the customers is to be maintained. The two most common means of obtaining performance measurement data are customer surveys (face to face, telep hone
and mail shots) and mystery shopping. Accurate and reliable measurements can onl y be
obtained if these surveys are completed professionally. See appendix 1 for guida nce on
mystery shopping. It is important to conduct surveys both before and after imple mentation
of a Contact Centre. STRATEGY
Short and long term strategies need to be planned right at the start and buy-in from the
executive and the project board needs to be obtained. As one manager put it, if y ou don t
know what you want your end game to be, how are you going to plan for it? ACCOMMODATION
Establishing the right environment for a Contact Centre is absolutely essential to the
ongoing success of the project. Staff in the centre will be seated at their agen t position for
long periods of time and the work can be very intense. If aspects of the accommo dation are
below standard, staff will quickly become de-motivated and productivity will suf fer as a
consequence.
When selecting and planning the environment the following issues need to be cons idered:
is the accommodation large enough to seat all the planned advisors with adequate space for furniture and technology?
is the accommodation light and airy and properly air conditioned?
a Contact Centre can become very noisy during busy periods. Advice on acoustic measures should be sought, particularly for the floor, walls and especially for the
ceiling. Do not be tempted to install high screens between agent positions as th is
will create a rabbit hutch feeling.
the desks workstations must be purpose built and be large enough to take all the technology and still leave ample room for the agent to take notes etc.
ensure that anatomically correct seats are provided. The advisors will be seated at
their work-stations for long periods of time. The need recognise Health and Safe ty
issues and to protect against injury is important. PEOPLE
Recruiting the right people to staff and manage your Contact Centre is the most important
task that will be faced. Get it right and the chances of building a successful C ontact Centre
will be greatly increased. Get it wrong and the project could fail.
There is a great deal of advice both in this document and in the reference docum ents that
should be of assistance.
The assistance and co-operation of the unions should be sought from the start, a s their
close involvement is essential. For many authorities the establishment of a Cont act Centre
will be the start of a process of radical change that will become an ongoing pro gramme.
Local authorities need to put together a solid training programme and also get the staff
involved in developing the services. This has proved to provide both on the job training and
a greater level of job satisfaction. Local Authorities must also establish if st aff will use
scripting and if so, to what degree it will be used. TECHNOLOGY
There is a great deal of information in this document that will provide a backgr ound to the
PLANNING
A project manager should be appointed from within the authority to manage the wh ole
Contact Centre project. The project manager should report to the overall CRM pro gramme
manager.
IMPLEMENTATION
The best advice gained from the research is not to over plan and to start small with a pilot.
The pilot will be used to iron out the processes and procedures and then build u p gradually
CASE STUDIES
LONDON BOROUGH OF BRENT
Date of study - 18th December 2003
Interviewed: Contact Centre Manager Paula Buckley
Interviewed by: Ian Dell, Caroline Adesanya, Geoff Pollock Origins of the LB Brent Contact Centre
LB Brent has been operating One Stop Shops (OSS) since 1993. This was a campaign lead by the Chief Executive of the time who readily got involved at the coal fac e of the
operations. It was to bring the council to the citizens on a face to face servic e aspect and
backed up by a We will provide the public with what they deserve attitude Driven b y the
success of the OSS, LBB opened a Call Centre in 1996, to deliver a similar range of
services via telephony. At this time Social Services was enveloped into the rang e of
services supported.
In addition to expanding the access points for the citizen, Brent were looking t o reduce
costs. These savings were made by closing down the SSS administration centre. The Contact centre now operates from 8am to 8pm Monday to Friday. The centre sta rted
with just 4 staff and has grown to a 40 seat Contact centre with a staff complim ent of 60.
The centre is managed by 6 Team leaders plus one Manger.
See LBTH comments for Call volumes, types and break downs average length of call etc
Staff
Staff were recruited from a number of sources:
mandatory job swap from back office functions to the centre open recruitment, both internally and externally
staff were recruited on suitability of customer service not necessarily on set s kills
or experience in Contact centres.
All staff are given two weeks intensive training. The first week is spent on asp ects of
Customer Care, i.e. Quality of service issues. In the 2nd week staff are given p roduct
training in Onyx e-Shop plus service delivery training in one particular service area. In
addition to this initial training staff are given regular coaching sessions, the y have regular
team meetings to encourage information sharing. Dependent on ability staff, are encouraged to be trained in further service areas.
There is no workforce scheduling software for the staff.
Regular reviews are held with the service areas to ensure that coherence is main tained.
Staff turnover is low, estimated to be between 8 and 9% pa. PB believes that thi s is helped
by operating staff friendly systems including: part time working, job sharing an d long day
shorter week working.
The Contact Centre staff are paid on scales between Scale 4 and scale SO1. Team Leaders and management are on scales SO1 to PO1.
Technology
The OSS started using an, in-house developed, call tracking system based on Lotu s Notes.
LB Brent as a Pathfinder Council moved to the Onyx e-Shop CRM system, with the implementation worked carried out by Deloitte and Touche. They have very basic I VR.
There is integration with Brent s e-mail system but no integration with any back-e nd
systems. Staff have direct access to relevant back-end systems.
The Contact Centre also has Onyx E-shop but also use the back end systems for th e
business silos. E.g. Housing, Social Services, Education etc. All of these syste ms are used
by the CC agents depending on the service request by the citizen. There is a pla nned move
towards using Onyx e-shop as the front end systems for all service requests in the future.
A Complaints handling application will be the first module to provide this integ ration.
The system does not provide scripting although agents have access to guidance no tes and
FAQ s. Very little BPR was done before the initial implementation. Service
Most systems are independent and CRM does not provide a single view across all services. Onyx e-Shop covers a number of services such as Housing (high Level) a nd
Street Care. There are several ways to access the Contact Centre: By use of the original service area numbers
By going through the main switchboard By using a generic 0800 number
There is no planned move to force the citizen down one route.
The staff also offer Gujurati as a second language. The centre has grown into a ful ly
fledged Contact Centre and deals with enquiries via the telephone, e mail, fax and written
mail. Staff respond to e-mails within 24hours. Customer Satisfaction
The council conduct regular customer satisfaction surveys. This year s survey reco rded a
98% level of customer satisfaction in polls and mystery shopper exercises. Hindsight
With the benefit of hindsight Brent would encourage anyone starting a Contact Ce ntre to:
Set goals and targets
Look ahead and write in flexibility clauses into contracts with both systems sup port
and staff.
Show that CC can be a career move and not a move backwards, better communication of change and impact.
LONDON BOROUGH OF TOWER HAMLETS Date of study - 18th December 2003
Interview with: Contact Centre Manager Keith Paulin Interviewed by: Caroline Adesanya, Geoff Pollock Reviewed by: Ian Dell
Origins of the LBTH - Housing Repairs Contact Centre
LBTH Housing Repairs Help Centre was set up in October 1999 as part of a complet e
overhaul of the Council s housing repairs service. The call centre went live in st ages across
the Borough, finally being available to all residents from July 2000.
The Repairs Help Centre shares the same room and facilities as Tower Hamlets Sieb el
CRM Contact Centre, and shares the Council s PBX and ACD systems, and IT and telephony support. However the two centres are operated and managed entirely sep arately,
with separate budgets and reporting lines.
The centre now operates 24/7/365 and includes emergency out of hours cover for a ll other
council services.
The centre has grown to a maximum of 28 seat Contact Centre (they are looking to expand
this to 32 seats) with a total staff compliment of 40. The centre is managed dur ing daytime
by up to 25 staff plus 2 managers plus Keith Paulin. Out of normal hours the cen tre is
managed by up to 10 staff plus one manager and admin support.
For the quarter October-December 2003, the Help Centre answered 88,000 calls on its
daytime service (0700-1800) with an average handling time of 266 seconds. Calls during
the daytime are exclusively related to reporting and chasing housing repairs. Staff
Staff were recruited from a number of sources but are mainly long term council s taff.
Recruitment is targeted at residents of Tower Hamlets using the Council s weekly newspaper.
All staff are given two weeks initial training course, with computer systems and procedures
courses followed by coaching and close monitoring before taking calls on their o wn.
Regular reviews are held with other housing sections and the Council s contractors to
ensure that consistency is maintained and operational problems overcome. Staff t urnover is
low, around 8-10% p/a. Among the factors behind this are staff friendly systems including:
flexi time, part time working, job sharing and flexible start and finish times w ithin the broad
needs of the service, a good physical working environment and local authority te rms and
conditions.
The Contact Centre staff are paid on Scale 6 (£22032-£23316) Technology
The Help Centre uses a browser-based repairs computer system which was developed by
the Council s in-house IT section and which fronts the original green screen IBM AS4 00
repairs system. Staff also have direct access to the housing back-end system. The Housing Department is now developing an Sx3/iWorld browser based CRM system. Implementation is being phased in gradually with the first module due to go live in spring
2004 and the repairs module by spring 2005. The project is being managed, in-hou se, by
Housing Department staff.
The Help Centre currently uses an Ericsson ACD system that is integral with the Ericsson
PABX telephone switch but they are planning to move to VIP s Speakeasy product. This will be a bolt-on to the PABX. Already live for the Council Tax call centre, the
VIP system is
in the final stages of development before being introduced for both the Help Cen tre and
Corporate Contact Centre.
The VIP system will allow development of IVR but as yet there are no plans to in corporate
other housing services into the Help Centre. Service
The main access route to the Help Centre is via a dedicated freephone number, with a
parallel number for the bi-lingual Bengali/Sylheti Line that serves the Borough s Bangladeshi population. Service users can also use freephone links from the Coun cil s
housing and One Stop Shop offices, and can be transferred from the main Council switchboard.
The Help Centre also deals with written and e-mail contacts, although the volume for these
is currently very small compared to telephone contact. Enhanced e-mail and web l inks are
due to be developed along with the new telephony and IT systems. Customer Satisfaction
The Housing Department conducts regular customer satisfaction surveys. The last survey,
in September 2003, carried out by an external research organisation, found 70% s atisfied
with the repair service as a whole. Previous in-house surveys found between 69%a nd 80%
satisfaction. The last survey had a sample base of 500 with residents asked to e xpress
satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the service.
Mystery shopping is also carried out by external organisations. The latest surve y, carried
out during November, marked the Help Centre at 81.5% against criteria assessing response
time, handling skills and overall impression, against a national benchmark of 72 .4%.
Hindsight
With the benefit of hindsight Tower Hamlets would encourage anyone starting a Co ntact
Centre to:
measure pre-launch workload carefully and set staffing levels accordingly build in flexibility to cope with increased demand after launch
ensure back office systems are in place to facilitate the work of the Contact Ce ntre
EAST RIDING DISTRICT COUNCIL Date of study - 20th January 2004 Michelle Rowbottom
Diane Andrews Helen Curtis
Origins of the East Riding of Yorkshire Contact Centre
A result of a survey conducted by the council showed that the customer wants a pe rsonal
service in comfortable and convenient locations, a choice of mediums though which they
can contact the council and problem resolution at a single point of contact. As a result, the
Customer Service Centre Network was first opened in January 1997, the main drive r of this
was to provide customers with a better and more efficient service, and to ensure that
customers in rural areas could have access to the council. The council is the la rgest unitary
council in England and has a sparsity of 1.3 people per hectare, a large number of East
Riding s citizens live in rural areas. Staff
Staff tend to be recruited internally from within the authority, but it is a req uirement that they
can demonstrate excellent customer service skills both face to face and via the phone. The
induction programme includes service specific training, mentoring and shadowing, which
generally takes about 3 weeks. Twice yearly employee development review programm es
identify any training requirements and regular training courses are also provide d to meet the
needs of the staff.
Staff are involved in departmental decision making and the resolution of Contact Centre
issues. They are also trained in a wide range of services, both within the Conta ct Centre
and the front desk activities.
Staff turnover is considered low and the majority of staff that do leave, do so to work within
other areas of the council. Staff are paid slightly higher than other Contact Ce ntres in West
Yorkshire.
The agents have the use of an A- Z knowledge base for each service area.These co ntain
content and flowcharts regarding the service but there is no scripting. There is also no
workforce scheduling software, however team leaders can manage and view the acti vity of
staff in all Contact Centres and if there is a requirements for more agents, tea m leaders can
ask staff from other Contact Centres to answer the phones. Technology
The Contact Centre uses Ericcson MD110 CCA ( Call Centre Assistant). The council also
consists of A-Z services, the customer database/ customer history, Feedback (Com ments,
Compliments and Complaints) and Qmatic, an integrated queuing system. The counci l also
uses Anite@work, a workflow system.
The customer agents have restricted access to SIDS, the social services system, and the
housing and repairs plus the Benefits system.
However most service requests are recorded by the Aspire system and sent to the back
office departments for action. Service
The Customer service Network offers a numbers of channels through which customer s can
contact the council, such as;
Walk-in centres- there are currently 11 customer service centres, with a further 2
planned.
Telephone Contact Centre this is operational Monday to Saturday (24hour service). The Contact Centre has 25-30 seats, however there is normally
approximately 15 agents answering calls. There are also team leaders that manage each site, however there are future plans for some of the team leaders to manage more than one location.
SMS Text Messaging Council can be accessed using texting, and the council responds within 10 days.
E-mail The council can also be accessed via e-mail, and free internet access points Enquiry Points are available in strategic places such as libraries & leisur e
centres for customers to use.
Videolink Provides face to face services with a customer and an agent using Vide o
conferencing, a scanner is also available for users to scan any documents. No IT skills are required to operate the video link, it is mostly an automated service . The
system known as Citizen-link has proved to be popular with customers in rural areas and access points are situated in booths in village areas and in a local supermarket store.
The Contact Centres are accessed via a single number and provide the following s ervices,
Housing & Benefits, Housing and Repairs, Refuse and street Cleaning, Social Serv ices and
The council have also partnered with a number of organisations using the Citizen -link
network, such as the Humberside Police, Citizens Advice Bureau, Law centre and L egal Aid
Franchised Solicitors. Customer Satisfaction
An exit poll of customers was undertaken during November 2002. This revealed the following;
98% were satisfied with staff
99% were satisfied with overall service 99% were satisfied with facilities
96% were satisfied with location and access 99% were satisfied with information given 81% of problems resolved in first visit 82% waited less than 5 minutes.
Hindsight
With the benefit of hindsight East Riding would encourage anyone starting a cont act centre
to ensure that staff contracts are flexible, so that they change as contact cent re hours or
services are extended. The next phase of development for East Riding will be to provide
integration to the backend department systems and closing service requests. WEST LANCS DISTRICT COUNCIL
Date of study 9th January 2004
Executive Manger -Customer Relations John Pye Contact Centre Manager Sharon Storey
ICT Manager Chris Isherwood
Origins of the West Lancs. Contact Centre
In August 2002, West Lancs. ran a mystery shopper exercise to determine the levels of
service offered to customers by the existing process. At that time all calls wer e answered
by telephonists who s role was to determine as quickly as possible which service t he caller
required and then to put them through to the relevant department. This process o ften
resulted in the call being returned to the switchboard if the member of staff wa s not at their
desk and the call then being transferred to another extension. If the call was s till not
answered the telephonist would ask the customer to ring back later, this could r esult in the
customer ringing several times during the same day. On some occasions the call w ould be
routed to an answer phone and a message left requesting a call back; calls were either not
returned or when the call was returned, the customer was out. This resulted in a great
many non-productive telephone calls.
West Lancs were looking to be CPA d and realised that the level of service deliver y needed
to be improved.
The Chief Executive and Leader of the Council decided in December 2002 to improv e the
quality of service to its customers. The key to the improvement was that the per son taking
the call initially would own the call until a specialist was available In circum stances where
no specialist was available a message would be taken and a convenient time for t he
specialist to return the call would be agreed. The call-backs would be tracked b y the
Contact Centre.
A feasibility study looked initially to set up a joint Contact Centre with Lancs . CC plus
Blackpool and Burnley. In addition, West Lancs. researched a number of options i ncluding:
a single central centre, a virtual centre plus a standalone centre for West Lanc s. Perhaps
linked to County. Following visits to a number of different LA s they were impress ed with the
Contact Centre at Swale DC that uses the Northgate CRM system.
The result of the study was a recommendation to emulate the Swale / Northgate se tup as a
standalone Contact Centre for West Lancs with the option of linking to county wh en and if
appropriate.
Terms were agreed with the supplier on 14th February 2003 and hardware and softw are
3
Staff
Staff were all recruited internally and they were taken initially on secondment. As of
1/1/2004 all staff were made permanent within the Contact Centre. The centre is equipped
with 12 seats. It was started with 5 full time equivalent staff, this has now gr own to 9 and will
expand as more services are taken on.
Initially staff were given four days soft skills training by Liverpool Direct plus an initial 1
hour system overview by Northgate. The staff were involved in developing the ser vices and
the service requests and configuring the look and feel of the system. This virtual ly
eliminated the need for training on the services to be delivered.
The agents have the use of FAQ s and intelligent forms but there is no scripting. There is no workforce scheduling software in use in the Contact Centre.
Regular reviews are held with the service areas to ensure that coherence is main tained.
Staff turnover as at 9/1/2004 has been zero although the Contact Centre Manager is due to
leave soon. JP believes that the high staff retention rate is due to the creatio n of a good
working environment backed up by excellent LA pay and conditions. Technology
As stated earlier in the case study, West Lancs. selected the Northgate CRM syst em. The
telephony is provided via an Ericsson PABX and an ACD system supplied by McFarla nd.
There are 30 incoming lines using the main West Lancs. Telephone number.
The Contact Centre is located in a refurbished area adjacent to the main recepti on and the
central OSS. All of these areas have been fitted out to a common theme to create a sense
of coherence. Service
At high level the Contact Centre takes all types of call including those service s not covered
by CRM. There are 17 services covered by CRM and more are being developed. Services in the Contact Centre (Jan 2004) are:
Absent voters, Electoral registration, Job applications, Complaints, comments an d
