Agenda item

Report of the Director of Customer and Advice Services (enclosed)

The current telephony has been in use since early 2008 and the Siemens contract expires on 31 March 2016 for both the corporate telephony and Contact Centre software. The limitations of the current telephony included cumbersome Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and voice message functionality, making it difficult to respond quickly to control call demand or unexpected events which impact upon incoming call volumes. The reporting software is inflexible and call data is only stored for 12 months which restricts historical reporting. Initial enquiries had been made some month ago into Microsoft Skype for Business (formerly Lync). This is the same system used by Preston City Council and is a bolt on to the existing corporate telephony system. This system will allow for a holistic view of dealing with all communications to the Council.

Any new telephony needs to support the aspirations of the Council’s digital agenda and be able to effectively support its service delivery on a day-to-day basis. The current training programme is moving the Single Front Office away from a generic call-handling structure so it is imperative for any new system to have the flexibility to distribute calls in line with this principle. The single Front Office must make maximum use of all available technology and any improvements afforded by an upgrade of the telephony will allow improvements in this area and enable associated efficiencies to be realised.

Delivery of voice communications over the internet provides a number of operational benefits; VoIP allows users to make telephone calls from a desktop computer or a suitable mobile device. As the telephone numbers are virtual, this would provide greater mobility and flexibility of location, widening the potential for home and lone working. The ability to check whether colleagues are online, offline or busy in a more integrated and intelligent way, will also enable much quicker responses from the Instant Messaging facility.

The voicemail facility is much improved, allowing voicemails to appear in a user’s inbox as an email and there is potential for integration with other applications such as email, social media, ‘click to call’ functionality on a website. VoiP also allows for more flexibility with conference calls and video conferencing.

Contact Centre telephony allows for intelligent call routing to be configured allowing for the most experienced available advisor to receive the next call in the queue. The call routing needs to facilitate the single Front Office approach to individual advisor skill sets, i.e. specialist plus one. The potential for integration with other web-based applications and web-based agent console and for more intelligence use of email allowing the routing of emails directly to inboxes of suitably skilled agents based on content or to/from addresses.

Other important features required are:

·         Customised messages for individual call queues

·         Call recording which is Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCIDSS) compliant and can be configured for all a percentage, on demand or none with an override queue or agent level.

·         Improved message recording and IVR options

·         Web based call flow editor which are easy and quick to configure

·         Web-based Interactive Response software offering speech recognition

The current web chat facility is no longer in use. It was not possible to prioritise the web chat content in any way.  The web chat facility needs to be easy to configure and integrate with the Council’s own website and should match the look and feel of the website. Skills based chat routing should be available so that enquiries can be directed to the most experienced available advisor and options to save web chat transcripts.

Reporting facilities need to include both real-time and historical data for agents, call queues, incoming number and an intelligent dashboard facility with proactive alerts and notifications when pre-defined criteria are met, allowing the Council to take action before there is a problem.

The authority has a private access network that is available to them and has a two trunk approach aimed at building in resilience by having separate Town Hall and Union. This would help to dissipate disruption when implementing the new system as existing infrastructure will stay in place whilst rolling out the new system and would remain until the Council were confident to switch it off. The system has to be upgraded and the necessary improvement and investment has been identified to ensure that there is a robust infrastructure in place to support the concept of the Single Front Office.

Members discussed current quality issues in relation to voice activated systems and its impact on customer satisfaction. Although they would welcome any new system that would improve upon this service, they urged the Council to conduct thorough tests to ensure better quality of the VoIP system.

RESOLVED – That the report be noted.