b5.0 call centre guide 1.0 final[1]

8/9/2019 B5.0 Call Centre Guide 1.0 Final[1]

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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 guidelines toLocal Authorities that are planning to implement a Contact Centre.


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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 DOESNT 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


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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


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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


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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


10.2.6 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


10.3.6 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


10.4.6 Hindsight ....................................................................................................................... 49


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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


10.5.7 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


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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


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INTRODUCTION

OVERVIEW

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) established an 80 million programme of

National Projects whose aim is to bring together councils, central government, the privatesector and others to define and deliver projects and national Local e-Governmentsolutions.The CRM National Project has the following objective: To enable councils to exploit CRMin order to transform customer service, by providing a comprehensive toolkit bymid-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 theirowninternal work

local Authorities can use it as a kick-off document to plan for their implementation

the product will enable more efficient management of resources through theguideline document being available and Local authorities not having to reinventthewheel

by providing an established framework in which to work, LAs will be aware of therequirements and constraints of a contact Centre

the product will evolve as it is used, and it will be under version control andrelease

The product is primarily aimed at LAs 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 accesspoints

This product has been developed from existing best practices that have been developed bythe COI and LA Pathfinders, including:


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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 implementationof 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. Fullreferences 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

K1.0 CRM Business Case


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TS3.2 CRM Customer Care Standards

TS3.1 CRM Interaction Standards

B3.0 CRM Support and Operation Guidelines

B4.0 CRM User Requirements Specification


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BACKGROUND

THE PURPOSE AND ORIGINS OF THIS DOCUMENT

The inspiration for this document came from a number of Local Authorities that participated

in the Proofs of Concept (POC) process when the CRM User Requirements Specification B4.0 and the CRM System Functional Specification B2.0 products were being developed.

DEFINITION OF A CONTACT CENTRE

A Contact Centre is a managed group of people (agents) who handle enquiries thataredelivered to them, over the phone, or electronically. These enquiries are passedto them bysome form of queuing system, that can prioritise which enquiries are to be handl

ed first, andcan also prioritise the order in which agents are chosen to handle the enquiries. Theeffectiveness with which the queuing system and the agents handle these enquiries ismonitored, both in real time and historically, so that the performance of the Contact Centrecan be checked against specific targets, and can be improved over time. In addition theagents are provided with some form of business application (i.e. CRM) to allow them torecord, manage and track the enquiry.

There are no particular size constraints on Contact Centres. They can be as small as 4 or 5agents up to many hundreds. There is also no reason for all the agents to be inthe sameroom or building. Modern technology means that the agents can be in geographicallydispersed locations, as long as they can still be managed as a group.

This definition is important as it differentiates a Contact Centre from an office, which mayhave a number of people handling calls as well, but where there are no queuing ormonitoring systems, and no overall management of the activities of the people inthe office.

Historically, Contact Centres only handled phone calls (call centres) but nowadays theymay also handle e-mails, web chats, and text messaging.


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THE LINK BETWEEN CONTACT CENTRES AND CRM

During the development of the technical specifications products, within the National CRMProgramme, Local Authorities made the point very strongly that introducing CRM into a

local authority would, in practice, go hand in hand with the introduction and use of ContactCentres and Walk-in Shops. It was therefore appropriate for the National CRM Programmeto develop a guide that sought to clarify the process for setting up a successful ContactCentre. The central theme of the National CRM Programme is to introduce the concept ofdelivering a coherent and consistent level of service across all customer accesschannelswhether that access be via the Internet, a telephone Contact Centre or face to face in a

walk-in shop. The technology, and many of the processes used in a telephone ContactCentre are the same as those that are used in a walk-in shop. Indeed, several LocalAuthorities make use of spare capacity in the walk-in shop as overflow for the telephoneContact Centre and vice versa; i.e. they share the same CRM application, telephonysystem, 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 asthere are different organisations and departments. Central government, almost bydefinition,tends to have very large centres that deal with customers nationwide. However, thesecentres generally provide a comparatively narrow range of services to both incoming callersand when making outgoing calls to customers. Local government call centres, by contrast,tend by their nature to cater for the local community and when centralised can offer a verywide range of services but mainly to incoming callers. Traditionally, in local government, callcentres tend to have been tacked on to individual service areas in an attempt to handle theincoming enquiries. These centres range in size from a few people sat round a desk with anumber of phones, to fairly large set-ups with telephony routed via ACD systems.CRM iskey 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 withthe

National CRM Programme, is focussing attention on access routes into Local Authorities.The disparate access provision whereby customers were given long lists of teleph


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onenumbers and had to try and decide which service they required, is giving way tomore


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coherent access routes via Walk-in Shops and centralised telephone Contact Centres, plus,of course, access via the internet, e-mail and text messaging.

Many Local Authorities still seem to view these routes as totally separate. However, a more

coherent approach is possible with the assistance of good data networks, well designedtelephony links, plus CRM. This is especially true of walk-in shops and telephone ContactCentres. To operate effectively they must share the same technology. All advisors in aLocal Authority should access the same CRM system to record and access customerrecords and case histories, telephone calls should be routed via the same telephony systemand they should all have access to the same backend applications. Only in this way canservice delivery become fully coordinated and the customer receive the same qual

ity ofservice, whether it is face to face, over the telephone, or via any of the otherelectronicaccess methods provided.

The case histories contained in this document outline some of the different waysLocalAuthorities have addressed these issues. Many of them, in essence, treat the provision ofservice through walk-in shops or via the telephone as one. In the East Riding, for instance,the Contact Centres are distributed around the authoritys area but they are linked so as to

provide one large virtual centre. Thus staff can be moved between the walk-in shop and thetelephone Contact Centre, to meet demand.

In this document we will treat either access route as if it were one whilst recognising that thecustomer care skills required for each may differ, but the technology used should be thesame.


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A HISTORY OF LOCAL AUTHORITY CONTACT CENTRES

The move towards centralised contact points where customers can gain access to thewhole range of Local Authority provided services can be traced back to 1993 whenthe

London Borough of Brent established the first (recorded) walk-in shop under thebanner ofthe One Stop Shop. This experiment was deemed successful and was repeated at anumber of other locations in the borough and has now been replicated in many otherAuthorities. It is more difficult to pinpoint the beginnings of telephone Contact Centres inLocal Government but certainly by the mid 1990s several authorities had recognised thatmany customers could not get to the walk-in shops, either because of the openingtimes orthe geographical distances were too great. It was also recognised that many peop

le preferto make enquiries via the phone, and by doing so greatly reducing the cost of serviceprovision. The emergence of CRM in local government, over the past three to fouryears,has enabled local authorities to provide a much greater level of coordination and coherencebetween the access methods.

WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESNT WORK

The research undertaken for this product shows quite clearly that there is no one right way

to implement a Contact Centre. Several different approaches have been tried andoften aparticular approach has been used because it was a good fit with the needs andrequirements of that authority at that time. Local Authorities embarking on a project toestablish a Contact Centre should examine both the short term and the likely long termneeds for the centre since the two may not be directly compatible. For instance,it mayseem to be a very attractive short-term solution to outsource the Contact Centrein orderthat it is up and running very quickly. However, if the long-term aim is to improve flexibilityand 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 their ownneeds and budget. These Contact Centres vary from the very small, four-person centre, upto a large centre with 200 or more seats. All these, regardless of size, faced thesamebasic problems regarding staff, technology and accommodation.


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Staff

Please refer to the FITLOG Calling Local Government and Making Contact documents forfurther information. (References are in section 11.1.2 of this document).

The research via our case studies highlights many common themes. Invariably andespecially at start-up Contact Centre staff are recruited internally from withinthe authority.The key selection criteria used tends towards knowledge of one or more service areas anda willingness to work in a Contact Centre. This is the opposite to the approachtaken incommercial centres where the key selection criteria is experience in customer caretechniques with on the job product training coming later.

Initial training appears to take around two weeks but with ongoing training and

coaching toensure progression, consistency and that the information provided is up to date.

Local authority Contact Centres, generally have a very low turnover of staff, usually muchless than 10% pa. This compares well with commercial centres that often have turnoverrates nearer 50% pa. This high level of staff retention has been put down to a combinationof:

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, flexibleworking, etc.

Technology is covered more fully in section 4.

Home workers

A few Local Authorities are experimenting with home workers to augment the mainContactCentre staff. This adds flexibility when planning for extended opening hours andforpotentially busy periods. It also enables authorities to employ groups such as disabledpeople who would find it difficult to travel and single mothers who cannot afford child care.Modern technology, especially the use of IP based systems and broadband telephony,

enables home workers to have access to the same systems at similar speeds as iftheywere based in the main Contact Centre.


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Outsourcing

From the research we have done it would appear that it is the larger authoritiesthat favouroutsourcing. The clear advantages to outsourcing are:

speed of start up

freedom from staffing issues other than those relating to potential loss of jobswithinthe authority

independence from many of the technology issues other than those relating tonetworking back into the authority.

clearly defined and known costs.

Partnering

Liverpool City Council is a good example of partnering. The council has partnered with BTand has established a range of programmes including the setting up of LiverpoolDirectLimited which is an independent company, jointly owned by Liverpool City Counciland BT.Liverpool Direct operates the citys telephone and walk-in Contact Centres on behalf of thecouncil. The advantages of this type of relationship are:

the sharing of costs

access to BTs technology and technical know how

access to BTs knowledge of operating large call centres

access to the council for staff recruitment


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CURRENT CONTACT CENTRE TECHNOLOGY

INTRODUCTION

This section looks at the most common forms of Contact Centre technology. However, it

should be noted that there has been a great deal of change in Contact Centre technologyover the last two years. This has resulted in a variety of alternatives to the traditionaltechnology used. The definition of current Contact Centre technology is therefore taken tomean the technology that is in place in the majority of call centres. This is primarily thehandling of calls delivered over the public telephone network, although there may also bethe 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

web chat server/SMS Server


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OrdinaryPhonesPSTNNetworkLinkBusiness

ApplicationHostsAgentsPABX ACDManagementSystem

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 agent. Thismeans that there are more telephone lines coming into an ACD than there are agentsavailable to handle the calls. (As opposed to a conventional telephone system (PABX)where there are usually fewer incoming lines than there are phones on desks.) Typically,the ratio of inbound calls to agents is of the order 5 : 1. There are a number of ways inwhich an ACD can be implemented, but typically it is a dedicated piece of hardware.

Simple Contact Centre Configuration

Figure 1:above shows a typical configuration for a Contact Centre. Calls arrivefrom thepublic phone network (PSTN) and are directed to the main telephone switch (PABX). Callsthat are destined to be handled by the Contact Centre are passed through the PABX andonto the ACD. The ACD then decides which agent should handle the call. The figure alsoshows the PC server running the management systems, and the business applicationhosts.


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Call Queuing

Within the ACD there are a number of queues which direct calls to agents with specificskills, or who work in particular departments. The ACD is able to choose which queue to

put a call into by looking at the number dialled by the caller, or by offering the caller anumber of choices. These choices are handled by a component of the ACD called theAuto Attendant, which is a very simple IVR system that can be configured to support asimple menu system.

The queuing system monitors the activity of the agents and passes calls in the queue to themost appropriate agent to handle the call. In addition the ACD will have a set of business

rules to say how calls held in queue will be treated. These rules will allow theACD to movecalls to another queue if this queue is filling up too fast, etc. Part of the managementsystem 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 functionalityhas to be able to handle different media. It would typically be extended to include e-mail,web cat, and SMS texts. These other media would have servers (see below) that re

ceivethe messages and then request a free agent to handle the enquiry. The ACD woulduse itsbusiness rules to decide the correct agent, prevent them receiving any further phone callsand 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 activities.Typically it is PC based and has a number of applications accessible through a commoninterface. These applications perform three main functions:

Specifying the hardware configuration of the ACD, e.g. how the inbound andoutbound telephone lines are used and where each agent telephone is. It wouldalso allow the creation of agent IDs so that agents can log on to the ACD

Specifying the way the calls are routed by the queuing system. Typically this willbe 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 Centres target times, etc. This


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reporting will be provided both in real time so that supervisors can take actioniftargets are not being met and historically so that senior management cananalyse the types of calls that are received

Functions 1 and 2 are usually the responsibility of dedicated Voice staff. Funct

ion 3 isusually 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 Centrethey needsome form of business application. These applications are usually linked to therest of thebusiness systems within an organisation, and allow the agents to access customerdetails.Where a CRM system has been implemented, then the business application would be

partof the CRM system. Usually the business application is not connected to the ACDin anyway, but it is possible to link it to the ACD through some form of Computer TelephoneIntegration (CTI). This allows the agents to control the calls they receive fromtheapplication, and to use information received from the ACD (or IVR) to help handle the call.CTI is discussed in section 4.4.6.

ADDITIONAL COMPONENTS

OrdinaryPhonesPSTNIVRNetworkLinkBusinessApplicationHostsAgentsPABX ACDManagementSystem InternetE-Mail Web/SMSVoiceRecordingCTI

Advanced Contact Centre


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OVERVIEW

The technology to enable a basic Contact Centre to start operating is quite simple. Oncethe ACD is in place, with its management system and associated business application,

agents can start handling calls, and their performance can be measured. Howeverthereare additional components that can be added to allow certain processes to be automated,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. Thisallowscertain 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 phonekeypad orby talking. The IVR in turn can respond with recorded text, text to speech translation, andcan access external databases. For example a caller might be enquiring about a housingrepair. The caller could supply the job number for the work, and the IVR could access therepairs database and speak back the current state of the work, or details of anappointmentfor an engineer to call.

Voice Recording

Voice Recording is also a common component in the Contact Centre. It has three mainfunctions:

Ensuring the quality of the dialogue with the customer

Supporting the training of agents by allowing supervisors and agents to playback good and bad calls and then analysing them to find out whatdifferentiates them

There is a third function of dispute resolution, where every call is recorded. Inaddition some systems provide a panic button that allows agents to record amalicious, abusive, or emergency call such as a bomb threat.

Typically not all calls are recorded. The Voice Recording is limited to a percentage of allcalls, 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 monitored,e.g. to record specific agents, to record specific types of call, or to record arandomselection of calls.


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Workforce Management

Workforce Management systems take data from the ACD, together with historical data anduse this to calculate the most effective shift patterns for the agents. They also provide

information during the day, on how to re-organise shifts if agents are absent, or if thenumber of contacts being received varies significantly from that expected

E-mail Server

For other contact types additional servers are employed. E-mails will be passedto an emailserver. The queuing system will then select agents to receive the messages forprocessing. Usually the agent is able to select a number of pre-written responses to allowthe e-mails to be responded to quickly, and to allow a consistent style and form

at. The emailsystem 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 willautomatically 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 program. Thecustomer 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-mailserver there is usually a set of pre-written replies to allow agents to respondquickly. Theagent may also be able to push web pages to the customer to show them extrainformation held on the website.

(Web chat is popular with people calling from an office or shared environment, as it allows amuch more private dialogue than is possible over the phone.)

The SMS server works in a similar way, but uses mobile phone text messaging. This hasproved to be popular amongst the teenage and early 20s age groups.

CTI Computer Telephone Integration

In order to allow the various components to interact with the ACD so that agentscan beallocated to handle different types of contact, some kind of Computer TelephoneIntegration(CTI) is required. This is usually provided by an additional server that connects to the ACDand allows other computer servers to control the way the ACD works. This can either be

used by the business application to control calls for the agent, i.e. automatically dialling


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calls, answering calls, and screen popping caller information; or CTI can be used by theservers 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.Thereare essentially two types of dialler: progressive and predictive. The progressive diallerworks its way through a list of numbers to dial. When someone answers, the callis passedto a free agent. The progressive dialler will only dial when an agent is free tohandle thecall. The predictive dialler dials numbers at a fast enough rate so that someoneanswers acall at the same time as an agent becomes free. (It predicts when an agent willbecome

free, and when a call will be answered.)


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EVOLVING TECHNOLOGIES

INTRODUCTION

The section above detailed the typical components of a traditional Contact Centre, along

with some of the additional elements that would be found in more advanced multi-channelContact Centres. Historically, these Contact Centres have been fairly large, anything from50 agents up to many hundreds, and the individual components have been sourced fromspecialist suppliers. For example, there were specialist ACD suppliers and separatespecialist IVR suppliers. A Contact Centre would have been built by sourcing theseindividually and than integrating them. However over the last two years a numberof

changes have taken place in the way Contact Centres are implemented:

PC Based solutions have been developed which are cost effective for smallnumbers of agents, down to as few as 8 or 10 agents

The underlying technology can be based on Voice over IP (VoIP) or IPtelephony rather than TDM digital voice connections

The Contact Centre can be based on hosted technology that is remote from theContact 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.Thisequipment used hardware and software developed by the supplier specifically to provideACD functionality. These systems were very reliable, often with dual hardware systems toensure they were fault tolerant, and used specialist operating systems tailoredfor use in theACD. However, these ACDs were relatively expensive, and were only cost effectiveforagent numbers of 50 and above.

Recently a number of ACDs have been developed based on PC server hardware. Theseare not quite so reliable as the traditional ACD as they use general purpose operatingsystems, but are much more cost effective. In addition, a number of functions that wereprovided by separate components in a traditional Contact Centre have been integrated onto


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the one PC server. This means that you will get the ACD, IVR, e-mail and web chatfunctions all supported on the same server.

PSTNVoice

and FaxApplicationHostsIVRE-MailInternetE-MailandWebACD

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 theone PC server

Lower support costs, as the PC server can be supported by existing IT staff, asopposed to dedicated Voice systems technicians

Disadvantages:

The functionality may be more restricted than the dedicated ACDs

The PC is inherently less reliable than the dedicated hardware, although thismay not be significant

Not all the PC based ACD providers are experts in call centres

More prone to Virus infection


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VOICE OVER IP OR IP TELEPHONY

The use of Voice over IP or IP telephony within a Contact Centre is becoming morecommon. In this architecture, both the voice connections and the data connections within

the Contact Centre are carried over the data network, as opposed to the separatevoice anddata networks in a traditional Contact Centre.

TelephoneNetworkInternet CustomerInternetGatewayIP-ACDIP-IVRIP-Recording

E-MailWeb ChatInternetRemoteAgentAgentsWithIP PhonesContact CentreData 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 voiceto the phones means they can be anywhere on the network. (Traditional ACDshave the phone hard wired to specific ports on the ACD. This means that movinga phone can be a lengthy process.) There is no need to manage a separatevoice network

It is easier to integrate other media types such as e-mail and web-chat, that arealready IP based


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The Contact Centre can be easily distributed across a number of physicallocations 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 enoughbandwidth to guarantee decent voice quality in the Contact Centre

A failure of the data network will bring down both the data networking and thevoice capability. The phones will stop working

There need to be special voice gateways to connect the Contact Centre to thePSTN

HOSTED CONTACT CENTRE

The technology made available by VoIP allows the Contact Centre to be remote from theagents. This enables service providers, such as BT and Cable and Wireless, to offerContact Centre services where they host all the hardware. All that is needed isa VPNconnection from the host hardware to the Contact Centre, where all the voice isdeliveredover IP. In addition, it is possible for the agent application to be hosted as well and to bedelivered to the agent over the same connection. Typically, these services are offered on a

per agent/per day cost which allows a Contact Centre to be set up with minimum capitalcost.


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IP-IVRGatewayCustomers Service Provider Contact CentrePSTNPSTN Voice and Dataover IP

IP-ACDVPN

Outsourced system

Advantages:

Low capital cost to set-up

Low support costs. The hardware and software is supported by the serviceprovider

Flexible solution, depending on contract, if there are large variations in thenumber of agents required through the year

Disadvantages

There is less scope for customising the solution offered, particularly if the serviceprovider is providing the application as well

The solutions tend to be more expensive than capital purchase as the size of theContact Centre gets above 50 seats. (See section 8.4)

The local authority is dependent on the quality of service achieved by the servicesupplier


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IMPACT ON CRM

OVERVIEW

The Contact Centre is one of the main areas of an organisation where it is possible to see

CRM in action. One of the key requirements of CRM is that the business application andthe agent know with whom they are dealing, so that the appropriate service can be 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 call

Telephone calls can be identified by using an IVR to ask the caller to identifythemselves in some way

E-mails already have the sender information contained in them

Web chats can require the caller to provide identification information before theconnection is made

The fact that all the enquiries can be identified means that the queuing mechanism (ACD)can then route the caller to the most appropriate agent to handle the enquiry. However, thismeans that the ACD must be connected in some way to a database that identifies whatservice a particular caller needs. There needs to be some way, therefore, of int

egrating theCRM system with the Contact Centre ACD.

MULTI-CHANNEL CONTACT HANDLING

For organisations that are looking to allow customers to submit enquiries acrossa range ofmedia, a multi-channel Contact Centre is key to allowing these different media to bemonitored. A properly integrated Contact Centre will provide the management tools tomonitor voice calls, e-mails and web chats and will set service level targets for these. Thequeuing system will then be able to prioritise how each enquiry is handled to enable theseservice level targets to be met.

From the perspective of CRM, the key requirement is that the agents handling theenquiry,whatever the channel, must be able to access the customer data, and that any actions theytake must be recorded in the CRM system.


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FUTURE PROOFING

INTRODUCTION

Where systems are being considered it is important to consider carefully the functionality

required across the lifetime of the Contact Centre. As there are a number of competingtechnologies available at the moment there needs to be a good match with both current andfuture requirements. Areas that need to be looked at include:

Maximum size of the Contact Centre. It should be clearly specified what thelikely maximum size of the Contact Centre will be. This is essential to ensurethat the ACD chosen is not over or under specified. For example, PC basedsystems tend to be best suited for between 10 and 100 agents. VoIP solutionshave 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 phonecalls in the Contact Centre, or if there is no intention of having agents handleamixture 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? Ifthere are multiple sites, then VoIP will probably be the most cost effective waytoimplement a solution

Is the Local Authority able to support type of network needed to provide thebandwidth 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 ContactCentres. If you are looking at a greenfield site, or a new Contact Centre, thenasystem based around VoIP should certainly be on any shortlist. All the keysuppliers in the market are able to offer VoIP solutions. VoIP also has thebenefit of being essentially location independent, so if one is considering homeworking then it will also be a good solution


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PC Based solutions. There is a wide range of PC based solutions available.These range from smaller versions of existing systems from establishedsuppliers, through to systems designed by new suppliers. The key factor here isthat there are many different ways to implement ACD systems on a PC, andvery careful evaluation of a PC solution is required before selecting one. Someof the suppliers in the PC market place have little real experience of Contact

Centres, which means that their management and queuing software doesntoffer enough functionality to properly run the Contact Centre. Additionally youneed to be sure that the supplier will be around in a few years time!


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on is support in the situation of system failure. As it will be the major interface withcustomers a fast response time will be required. This typically needs to be better than afour- hour response, during the opening hours of the Contact Centre. It will also be

important to ensure that support activity can take place out of hours to ensurethat thecentre can operate the next morning. Whether to buy the equipment, lease it, oropt for ahosted solution, is usually a financial decision. The functionality available isnot likely todiffer 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 differentsuppliers 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 ACD.

a supplier which was dedicated to producing ACD and multi-channel queuingsolutions;

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 chatand e-mail,as well as setup and ongoing maintenance costs, and the CRM business applicationcosts.


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If only some of the functionality is required, for example for a telephone onlysystem, it ispossible to reduce the costs significantly.


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50 Agents


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HOW TO GET STARTED

RESEARCH

Take time to look around the market and see what is on offer and what fits in with your

particular requirements. If you are at all unsure about crucial aspects such asthe ContactCentre environment or the technology, call in an expert to advise.

BENCHMARKING

Measurement of performance improvements is essential if continued buy in from theauthority and the customers is to be maintained. The two most common means ofobtaining performance measurement data are customer surveys (face to face, telephoneand mail shots) and mystery shopping. Accurate and reliable measurements can onl

y beobtained if these surveys are completed professionally. See appendix 1 for guidance onmystery shopping. It is important to conduct surveys both before and after implementationof a Contact Centre.

STRATEGY

Short and long term strategies need to be planned right at the start and buy-infrom theexecutive and the project board needs to be obtained. As one manager put it, if you dont

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 essentialto theongoing success of the project. Staff in the centre will be seated at their agent position forlong periods of time and the work can be very intense. If aspects of the accommodation arebelow standard, staff will quickly become de-motivated and productivity will suffer as aconsequence.

When selecting and planning the environment the following issues need to be considered:

is the accommodation large enough to seat all the planned advisors with adequatespace for furniture and technology?


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PLANNING

A project manager should be appointed from within the authority to manage the wholeContact Centre project. The project manager should report to the overall CRM programme

manager.

IMPLEMENTATION

The best advice gained from the research is not to over plan and to start smallwith a pilot.The pilot will be used to iron out the processes and procedures and then build up graduallyas the Contact Centre takes on new services.


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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 campaignlead by the Chief Executive of the time who readily got involved at the coal face of theoperations. It was to bring the council to the citizens on a face to face service aspect andbacked up by a We will provide the public with what they deserve attitude Driven b

y thesuccess of the OSS, LBB opened a Call Centre in 1996, to deliver a similar rangeofservices via telephony. At this time Social Services was enveloped into the range ofservices supported.

In addition to expanding the access points for the citizen, Brent were looking to reducecosts. 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 started

with just 4 staff and has grown to a 40 seat Contact centre with a staff compliment 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 calletc

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 skillsor experience in Contact centres.

recruitment is targeted at residents of Brent


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All staff are given two weeks intensive training. The first week is spent on aspects ofCustomer Care, i.e. Quality of service issues. In the 2nd week staff are given producttraining in Onyx e-Shop plus service delivery training in one particular servicearea. In

addition to this initial training staff are given regular coaching sessions, they have regularteam meetings to encourage information sharing. Dependent on ability staff, areencouraged 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 maintained.

Staff turnover is low, estimated to be between 8 and 9% pa. PB believes that this is helped

by operating staff friendly systems including: part time working, job sharing and long day shorter week working.

The Contact Centre staff are paid on scales between Scale 4 and scale SO1. TeamLeaders and management are on scales SO1 to PO1.

Technology

The OSS started using an, in-house developed, call tracking system based on Lotus Notes.LB Brent as a Pathfinder Council moved to the Onyx e-Shop CRM system, with theimplementation worked carried out by Deloitte and Touche. They have very basic I

VR.There is integration with Brents e-mail system but no integration with any back-endsystems. 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 thebusiness silos. E.g. Housing, Social Services, Education etc. All of these systems are usedby the CC agents depending on the service request by the citizen. There is a planned movetowards using Onyx e-shop as the front end systems for all service requests in thefuture.A Complaints handling application will be the first module to provide this integration.

The system does not provide scripting although agents have access to guidance notes andFAQs. Very little BPR was done before the initial implementation.

Service

Most systems are independent and CRM does not provide a single view across allservices. Onyx e-Shop covers a number of services such as Housing (high Level) and

Street Care. There are several ways to access the Contact Centre:

By use of the original service area numbers


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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 Gujuratias a second language. The centre has grown into a fullyfledged Contact Centre and deals with enquiries via the telephone, email, fax andwrittenmail. Staff respond to e-mails within 24hours.

Customer Satisfaction

The council conduct regular customer satisfaction surveys. This years survey recorded a98% level of customer satisfaction in polls and mystery shopper exercises.

Hindsight

With the benefit of hindsight Brent would encourage anyone starting a Contact Centre to:

Set goals and targets

Look ahead and write in flexibility clauses into contracts with both systems supportand staff.

Show that CC can be a career move and not a move backwards, bettercommunication of change and impact.


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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 completeoverhaul of the Councils housing repairs service. The call centre went live in stages acrossthe Borough, finally being available to all residents from July 2000.

The Repairs Help Centre shares the same room and facilities as Tower HamletsSiebel

CRM Contact Centre, and shares the Councils PBX and ACD systems, and IT andtelephony support. However the two centres are operated and managed entirely separately,with separate budgets and reporting lines.

The centre now operates 24/7/365 and includes emergency out of hours cover for all othercouncil services.

The centre has grown to a maximum of 28 seat Contact Centre (they are looking toexpand

this to 32 seats) with a total staff compliment of 40. The centre is managed during daytimeby up to 25 staff plus 2 managers plus Keith Paulin. Out of normal hours the centre ismanaged by up to 10 staff plus one manager and admin support.

For the quarter October-December 2003, the Help Centre answered 88,000 calls onitsdaytime service (0700-1800) with an average handling time of 266 seconds. Callsduringthe 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 staff.Recruitment is targeted at residents of Tower Hamlets using the Councils weeklynewspaper.


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All staff are given two weeks initial training course, with computer systems andprocedurescourses followed by coaching and close monitoring before taking calls on their own.Regular reviews are held with other housing sections and the Councils contractorsto

ensure that consistency is maintained and operational problems overcome. Staff turnover islow, around 8-10% p/a. Among the factors behind this are staff friendly systemsincluding:flexi time, part time working, job sharing and flexible start and finish times within the broadneeds of the service, a good physical working environment and local authority terms andconditions.

The Contact Centre staff are paid on Scale 6 (22032-23316)

Technology

The Help Centre uses a browser-based repairs computer system which was developedbythe Councils in-house IT section and which fronts the original green screen IBM AS400repairs 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 livein spring2004 and the repairs module by spring 2005. The project is being managed, in-hou

se, byHousing Department staff.

The Help Centre currently uses an Ericsson ACD system that is integral with theEricssonPABX telephone switch but they are planning to move to VIPs Speakeasy product. Thiswill be a bolt-on to the PABX. Already live for the Council Tax call centre, theVIP system isin the final stages of development before being introduced for both the Help Centre andCorporate Contact Centre.

The VIP system will allow development of IVR but as yet there are no plans to incorporateother housing services into the Help Centre.

Service

The main access route to the Help Centre is via a dedicated freephone number, withaparallel number for the bi-lingual Bengali/Sylheti Line that serves the BoroughsBangladeshi population. Service users can also use freephone links from the Councilshousing and One Stop Shop offices, and can be transferred from the main Council

switchboard.


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The Help Centre also deals with written and e-mail contacts, although the volumefor theseis currently very small compared to telephone contact. Enhanced e-mail and web links aredue to be developed along with the new telephony and IT systems.


The Housing Department conducts regular customer satisfaction surveys. The lastsurvey,in September 2003, carried out by an external research organisation, found 70% satisfiedwith the repair service as a whole. Previous in-house surveys found between 69%and 80%satisfaction. The last survey had a sample base of 500 with residents asked to expresssatisfaction or dissatisfaction with the service.

Mystery shopping is also carried out by external organisations. The latest survey, carriedout during November, marked the Help Centre at 81.5% against criteria assessingresponsetime, 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 ContactCentre 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 Centre

EAST RIDING DISTRICT COUNCIL

Date of study - 20th January 2004

Michelle Rowbottom

Diane Andrews

Helen Curtis

Caroline Adesanya, Geoff Pollock


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Origins of the East Riding of Yorkshire Contact Centre

A result of a survey conducted by the council showed that the customer wants a personalservice in comfortable and convenient locations, a choice of mediums though whichthey

can contact the council and problem resolution at a single point of contact. Asa result, theCustomer Service Centre Network was first opened in January 1997, the main driver of thiswas to provide customers with a better and more efficient service, and to ensurethatcustomers in rural areas could have access to the council. The council is the largest unitarycouncil in England and has a sparsity of 1.3 people per hectare, a large numberof EastRidings citizens live in rural areas.

Staff

Staff tend to be recruited internally from within the authority, but it is a requirement that theycan demonstrate excellent customer service skills both face to face and via thephone. Theinduction programme includes service specific training, mentoring and shadowing,whichgenerally takes about 3 weeks. Twice yearly employee development review programmesidentify any training requirements and regular training courses are also provided to meet theneeds of the staff.

Staff are involved in departmental decision making and the resolution of ContactCentreissues. They are also trained in a wide range of services, both within the Contact Centreand the front desk activities.

Staff turnover is considered low and the majority of staff that do leave, do soto work withinother areas of the council. Staff are paid slightly higher than other Contact Centres in WestYorkshire.

The agents have the use of an A- Z knowledge base for each service area.These containcontent and flowcharts regarding the service but there is no scripting. There isalso noworkforce scheduling software, however team leaders can manage and view the activity ofstaff in all Contact Centres and if there is a requirements for more agents, team leaders canask staff from other Contact Centres to answer the phones.

Technology

The Contact Centre uses Ericcson MD110 CCA ( Call Centre Assistant). The councilalsouse LYNX CT solutions Aspire Customer Relationship Management Software, this


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consists of A-Z services, the customer database/ customer history, Feedback (Comments,


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The council have also partnered with a number of organisations using the Citizen-linknetwork, such as the Humberside Police, Citizens Advice Bureau, Law centre and Legal AidFranchised Solicitors.


An exit poll of customers was undertaken during November 2002. This revealed thefollowing;

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 contact centreto ensure that staff contracts are flexible, so that they change as contact cent

re hours orservices are extended. The next phase of development for East Riding will be toprovideintegration 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

Interviewers: Caroline Adesanya, Geoff Pollock


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Origins of the West Lancs. Contact Centre

In August 2002, West Lancs. ran a mystery shopper exercise to determine the levelsofservice offered to customers by the existing process. At that time all calls were answered

by telephonists whos role was to determine as quickly as possible which service the callerrequired and then to put them through to the relevant department. This process oftenresulted in the call being returned to the switchboard if the member of staff was not at theirdesk and the call then being transferred to another extension. If the call was still notanswered the telephonist would ask the customer to ring back later, this could result in thecustomer ringing several times during the same day. On some occasions the call would be

routed to an answer phone and a message left requesting a call back; calls wereeither notreturned or when the call was returned, the customer was out. This resulted in agreatmany non-productive telephone calls.

West Lancs were looking to be CPAd and realised that the level of service delivery neededto be improved.

The Chief Executive and Leader of the Council decided in December 2002 to improve thequality of service to its customers. The key to the improvement was that the per

son takingthe call initially would own the call until a specialist was available In circumstances whereno specialist was available a message would be taken and a convenient time for thespecialist to return the call would be agreed. The call-backs would be tracked by theContact Centre.

A feasibility study looked initially to set up a joint Contact Centre with Lancs. CC plusBlackpool and Burnley. In addition, West Lancs. researched a number of options including:a single central centre, a virtual centre plus a standalone centre for West Lancs. Perhapslinked to County. Following visits to a number of different LAs they were impressed with theContact Centre at Swale DC that uses the Northgate CRM system.

The result of the study was a recommendation to emulate the Swale / Northgate setup as astandalone Contact Centre for West Lancs with the option of linking to county when and ifappropriate.

Terms were agreed with the supplier on 14th February 2003 and hardware and softwaredelivered on site on 9th March 2003. The Contact Centre went live on 6th May 200


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3delivering 17 services.


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Staff

Staff were all recruited internally and they were taken initially on secondment.As of1/1/2004 all staff were made permanent within the Contact Centre. The centre isequipped

with 12 seats. It was started with 5 full time equivalent staff, this has now grown to 9 and willexpand as more services are taken on.

Initially staff were given four days soft skills training by Liverpool Direct plusan initial 1hour system overview by Northgate. The staff were involved in developing the services andthe service requests and configuring the look and feel of the system. This virtuallyeliminated the need for training on the services to be delivered.

The agents have the use of FAQs 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 maintained.

Staff turnover as at 9/1/2004 has been zero although the Contact Centre Manageris due toleave soon. JP believes that the high staff retention rate is due to the creation of a goodworking environment backed up by excellent LA pay and conditions.

Technology

As stated earlier in the case study, West Lancs. selected the Northgate CRM system. Thetelephony is provided via an Ericsson PABX and an ACD system supplied by McFarland.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 reception and thecentral OSS. All of these areas have been fitted out to a common theme to createa senseof coherence.

Service

At high level the Contact Centre takes all types of call including those services not coveredby 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 andcompliments, Pest control, abandoned vehicles, Bulk waste collections, Domestic


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waste, Roads and footways, recycling, Surface water and flooding, Fly tipping,Gritting, Street lighting, Change of address, Customer enquiries, Planning - plusWeb payments and Business enquiries are about to be implemented.

Most backend systems are not integrated thus CRM does not yet provide a single vi

ewacross all services.

Callers are directed to use the main switchboard number, calls are then routed to theContact Centre.

The centre deals with enquiries via the telephone, email, fax and written mail.


A 2nd mystery shopper exercise in July 2003 showed that:

100% of calls were answered within 21 sec.

40% of calls were dealt with at the first point of contact

30% were referred to the back office for completion

30% were for services not provided by the Council and an alternative number wasadvised

Since May 2003 many back-end services have seen a rise in PIs and there has beenareduction in abandoned calls and repeat calls.

Hindsight

With the benefit of hindsight West Lancashire would encourage anyone starting aContactCentre to:

take longer over the planning and implementation but dont over plan.

start with the services with simple processes and high volume calls

plan to streamline access to the council first.


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HULL CITY COUNCIL

Date of study - 19th January 2004

Executive Manger, Customer Relations - Lee Kirk

Customer Care Manager - Graham Lewis

Kingston Connect Call Centre Manager - Julie Gleeson

e-Government manager - Leslie Moore

Interviewers - Caroline Adesanya, Geoff Pollock

Origins of the Hull City Council (Hull CC) Hull Connect Call Centre

Hull is a highly urbanised city with a population of around 250,000 (fallen from300,000 in

1995). Hull CC manages a large estate of council housing and has fostered a culture ofhigh dependency on the authority.

In 2000, following a number of poor assessments Hull CC decided that they neededtototally revamp the way they delivered services to their customers. They set up atransformation team with the task of completely re-engineering service delivery.At thatstage there were no One Stop Shops or centralised call centres. The individual serviceareas handled all customer enquiries. A customer survey was undertaken that show

ed49% of customers preferred dealing with the council over the phone, 42% preferred to dealface to face and just 9% preferred to use the Internet.

To enable them to gain some quick wins, the transformation team decided to concentrateinitially on the provision of telephone access.

In August 2000 they established a pilot call centre that was outsourced to KingstonCommunications (KC), an independent telephone operator that is 51% owned by HullCC.In this pilot they provided access to a single service, Cleansing. Under this outsourcingagreement KC is responsible for the provision of: staff, accommodation, telephony, ACDand IVR. Hull CC is responsible for CRM provision and development plus the developmentand maintenance of the A-Z database, GIS and repair finder systems.

Following the success of the pilot Hull CC agreed a seven year outsourcing dealwith KCand in August 2001 moved to phase one of full service provision by expanding therange of


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Staff Hull CC

The A-Z of services that is used as the bible by the call centre is maintained byappointedrepresentatives in each of the service areas. There is still a detectable levelof uncertainty

amongst Hull CC staff about the concept of the call centre and the level of service offered.

Technology

As before, Kingston Communications is responsible for the provision of telephonyservices.These are routed via their Lucent systems. The number of incoming lines is determined byKingston Communications to match demand.

Hull CC has partnered with Oracle for the provision of a CRM system. They are cu

rrentlyusing version 11.55 but are due to move to the new local government version Oracle LG45.Hull CC has a small team dedicated to the on-going development of the CRM systemandthe service in general.

Service

The Call Centre takes calls for all Hull CC services. The centre only deals withenquiriesvia the telephone. Enquiries via e-mail, fax and written mail are dealt with bythe relevant

service areas. The call centre is open from 8am 7pm Monday to Friday and 9 1 onSaturdays.

Call centre advisors have access to a Digital Mapping System on an Arcview platform thatenables them to identify and locate property and street furniture, accurately. They alsohave access to Repair Finder, an SX3 diagnostic tool that enables them to pinpoint thelikely cause of a reported problem and thus be able to more accurately inform the housingrepair service as to the nature of a problem. There are seven fully integrated services. Theremainder of the services use the workflow system to generate e-mails to the back officewith work requests. When a service request is passed to the service area the case isclosed and there is no onward tracking. Work is underway to develop a light version ofCRM to use with the services that do not have full access to CRM.

Hull CC have an overall SLA with Kingston Communications and there are also individualSLAs for each of the services provided.


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BIBLIOGRAPHY

RECOMMENDED READING

Central Office of Information (COI)

Document Title

Publisher

Web Site

Better Practice Guidance forgovernment Contact Centres

(Draft for consultation)

COI Communications

Central Office of Information

www.coi.gov.uk/ccg

FITLOG

Document Title

Publisher

Web Site

Calling Local Government

Using call centres to improveservice delivery

FITLOG

Foundation for InformationTechnology in LocalGovernment

www.fitlog.com

Making Contact

Developing successful call centresin Local Government

FITLOG


www.fitlog.com


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Developing effective telephonecontact with citizens

A Checklist for Local Government

FITLOG


www.fitlog.com

Electronic Government

A Framework for action

FITLOG


www.fitlog.com


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AUTHORS, CONTRIBUTORS &ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Version:

Version 1.0 Final

Date:

March 2004

Author:

Geoff Pollock and Caroline Adesanya

Owner:

Office of the Deputy Prime Minister

Client:

London Borough of Tower Hamlets

This CRM Product was developed as a part of the National CRM Programme. Primarywork on this product was undertaken by Brent Council with assistance from the followingSuppliers and Local Authorities:

KEY CONTRIBUTORS

All information details are up to date and relevant to UK LA market place

E- Government Programme for provision of resources

East Riding Council

Hull City Council

LB Brent

LB Newham Council for provision of resources

LB Tower Hamlets

Liverpool City Council

West Lancs District Council

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Reginald Surridge - Product Consultant

David Mackenzie - Product Consultant

Ian Dell - Product Consultant


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GLOSSARY OF TERMS

The following terms were extracted from the CRM Glossary in January 2004. For the mostcurrent definition, refer to www.crmacademy.org/glossary

Term

Definition

BPR

Business Process Reengineering

Council

Refers to District, Metropolitan, City, Unitary or London Boroughcouncil

ERP

Enterprise Resource Planning

ICT

Information and Communications Technology

LA

Local Authority

Maturity Model

The model that was developed in the CRM Scan to help navigatethrough the highly complex set of option and CRM variants open to anycouncil that seeks to, or is already, implementing CRM

Programme

Refers to The National CRM Programme

Citizens 1

Individuals who live in a local authoritys area.

Customer 2

Individuals or businesses that are dependent upon a LAs services. AllCitizens are customers.

CRM

Customer Relationship Management

Contact Centre

A Contact Centre is a managed group of people (agents) who handleenquiries that are delivered to them face to face, over the phone, orelectronically.


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SMS

Short Message Service a technology used by mobile phone companiesto provide a TEXT Message service

PDA

Personal Data Assistant

DPA

Data Protection Act

GIS

Geographical Information System

IP

Internet Protocol

Manchester Business School Scan Document 17th June 2003Manchester Business School Scan Document 17th June 2003


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VoIP

Voice over IP


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CONTRACTING A MYSTERY SHOPPER

ISSUES TO CONSIDER

determine how many checks and/or units are to be subjected to testing. Somecritical units may be subjected to annual testing whereas others may only need

assessment every two or three years

ascertain and provide any performance targets that units should currently beworking to achieve e.g. time to answer telephone, respond to letters/e-mails, etc.

ascertain and provide any standard wording or greeting that should be given byemployees

ascertain which units can be checked by external customers and which, by theirvery nature, can only be assessed internally. It is likely that some element ofinternal checking will be required. Find an appropriate person or relevant

people/units to undertake this task. Internal feedback and monitoring of otherdepartments may be necessary

determine method of testing, choosing from a range of telephone, e-mail, face-toface,letter, fax, voicemail etc. Select the most appropriate method for each unit or try two or three different approaches with each unit if preferred. A customerquerying information on a website is more likely to e-mail a query than phone itthrough. Some units should have face-to-face checks e.g. Museums, Town Halls,Tourist Information, Theatres etc. It may also be important to check out services for

disabled users and consider how the deaf or blind would be contacting the Council

for each unit to be tested, a list of suggested questions should be established.Thiscan either be provided by the Council, to assist the Mystery Shopper, or the MysteryShopper should be given free reign to investigate and research web site informationand devise their own questions. It is likely that a combination of both optionswill bethe best approach, as the Mystery Shopper may have little understanding of theroles carried out by some units/departments and will require some guidance. ACouncil-provided list of questions to ask may be too restrictive. The MysteryShopper should have some flexibility


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the level of qualitative and quantitative feedback should be addressed. It mustbeaccepted that the majority of feedback will be qualitative and largely subjective.However, an element of quantitative feedback is also required. The style offeedback should be determined at outset. Will graphs be required? Standard

format or layout?

how will the Shopper monitor or record the contact itself. Will they have a checklistof areas that need to be covered? How will that be done during a face-to-facemeeting? Can the Shopper use tape recording, Dictaphones etc? What are thelegalities of recording people without their knowledge? Is the onus on the Shopperor the Council that employed them? Can conversations be paraphrased or shouldthey be accurately transcribed?

the Shopper needs to monitor many issues during the contact phase. Observation

and memory must be carefully combined to ensure that all aspects are covered. Itmay be useful for the Shopper to have a friend with them during face-to-face visitsso that the friend can note key aspects such as presence of name badges,cleanliness, leaflets, seating, other customers etc. They must listen and lookcarefully

the Shopper should set up a dummy e-mail account (e.g. hotmail, msn, talk21) tohandle contact with the Council. This is critical if the Shopper is known to theCouncil, or if word spreads to be wary of certain names. New e-mail accounts can

be set up quickly and easily if one is blown

if peer comparisons are required, how will this be done? Will the Mystery Shopperbe expected to test neighbouring Councils, or Peer Group Councils? Will questionsbe standardised across areas to help comparisons be made? Will Councils sharetheir feedback with others?

findings should be both positive and negative. It is just as important to pick up andspread good practice as it is to prevent bad practice or work on areas forimprovement. Praise should be given where due! The Shopper can makerecommendations but must remember that, in this scenario, the Council is theircustomer and can use the information gathered in any way they see fit

conducting Mystery Shops can be difficult. The Shopper has to ask questions thatare not too specific and will not lead to situations whereby they have to give realnames or addresses in order to assess a unit thoroughly. General enquiries arenormally carried out, or the

b5.0 call centre guide 1.0 final[1]

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