UK Council to transform its contact centres

UK Council to use next-generation workforce optimisation solution to help transform customer service across three citizen contact centres

Verint has announced that Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council (SMBC), a West Midlands council serving more than 280,000 citizens, is implementing the next-generation Impact 360® Workforce Optimisation suite from Verint® Witness Actionable Solutions®.

The council is taking a phased approach to the deployment, which is comprised of three core solutions including workforce planning and scheduling, quality and performance management, and customer feedback surveys. The organisation launched a project that began with the implementation of a new server, IP telephony and multimedia environment to create seamless integration between its contact centres in preparation for the full roll-out of Verint's solutions. In total, Impact 360 will support more than 170 agent seats across Sandwell Council's three citizen contact centres located across the West Midlands.

Verint strategic partner BT is conducting the Impact 360 Workforce Optimisation implementation as part of the Transform Sandwell partnership. Transform Sandwell is a 15-year, major corporate partnership programme between BT and Sandwell Council. The partnership focuses on the delivery of quality customer services together with the realisation of savings efficiencies and benefits to both the council and its citizens. Transform Sandwell works particularly with the council's Revenues and Benefits team and also partners with Sandwell Homes, an arms length management organisation linked to the council. It acquired a single workforce optimisation platform to deliver a seamless and consistent quality of customer service and experience throughout the borough.

With Impact 360, Sandwell Council can increase the efficiency of its contact centres by managing agent schedules and skill sets to help ensure it has the right number of advisors available to fulfill demand from residents. This replaces a time-consuming manual system that the council had previously used to predict call volumes and track against demand. Impact 360's monitoring capabilities will enable it to capture citizen interactions and analyse data from recorded calls to better understand trends and identify improvement areas. The council also will use Verint's workforce optimisation software to capture desktop application use and navigation to help ensure workflow efficiencies. Using the solution's customer survey functionality, it will benefit from direct Sandwell citizen feedback.

Further, with Impact 360, the organisation will be even better equipped to address the requirements of the UK Government's NI 14 indicator - which is intended to reduce avoidable contact, or calls that are of little value, between local authorities and their communities.

"Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council is responsible for public services across six towns in the West Midlands. As part of the Transform Sandwell partnership, we are working to evolve our call centre operations and improve efficiency. As a result of the initiative, we're anticipating significant efficiency gains," comments Melanie Dudley, Sandwell Council's director of transformation.

"Implementing Verint's Impact 360 suite will help us to consistently develop and improve how we listen and respond to our citizens," adds Dudley. "We're looking forward to adopting a more integrated approach to workforce optimisation that will allow us to concentrate further on improving the customer experience we deliver."