How Sabio worked with Newport City Council to successfully design, implement and support its award winning public sector contact centre based on Avaya systems and applications.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Before launching its Citizen Contact Centre, Newport had no consistent way of measuring its customer service delivery and had no formal mechanism to look at service performance. 86% of local citizens preferred dealing with the council by phone. However it was acknowledged that some areas provided a good telephone service while other areas suffered from call abandonment rates of up to 40 per cent. The Council needed to address this issue while also meeting the councils targets for e-service delivery.

SABIO SOLUTION

The Council selected Sabio to manage the implementation of the call centre telephony infrastructure and provide ongoing support for the solution that consisted of Avaya’s advanced communications suite as well as Workforce Optimisation technology.

RESULTS DELIVERED

• A single point for all telephone contact with the council
• Through effective first call resolution, now delivers an improved quality of service
• Significantly reduced call abandonment rates
• Low attrition along with high quality service delivery has led to a contact centre that the people of Newport are praising
• The council has won major contact centre awards including ‘Contact Centre of the Year’ at both the National Customer Service Awards and at the Welsh Contact Centre Awards.

How Sabio helped Newport City Council use WFO to become an award winning local authority.

BUSINESS ISSUES

Newport City Council needed to address the Government's 2005 service delivery targets. An independent survey revealed 86 per cent of residents preferred to contact the council by telephone, but 45 per cent of incoming calls to the council were being abandoned

SABIO SOLUTION

Sabio advised on what solutions were needed to optimise the operational performance of its new access centre. Sabio managed the implementation of both Witness Systems' eQuality performance optimisation software and Open Wave Workforce Management to deliver a workforce optimisation strategy

RESULTS DELIVERED

Within 6 months NCC had achieved a flagship public sector operation with:

• Staff attrition rates dropping to below 5%
• Sickness and absence falling below the regional average, to 4%
• Staff competency has increased, training costs have decreased and calls per agent doubled over the first 12 months.