Datacraft’s Paul Goode is taking a group of New Zealand managers to the Contact Centre Global Forum in France. On their way to Cannes they are calling in at centres in the UK and Europe. In the following post Goode describes their visit to the Leeds City Council, located in the north of England.
I am writing this on the train to Scotland, having spent a couple of nights in Leeds. Our visit to the Leeds City Council Contact centre was very successful. Whilst not even remotely in the same line of business as my clients, the visit provided them with plenty of insights into customer service. This contact centre is very dear to my heart - it is the last one I built in the UK before I came to New Zealand.
It has approximately 290 seats located in 2.5 floors of a new building. The technology is Avaya ms8720 VOIP PABX/ACD. The council has made a conscious decision not to use IVR (they have had to for a couple of services for call segmentation, but these account for a very small proportion of calls received). The switchboard was recently transferred to the contact centre, and following an identification of callers, these calls have been reduced by 30%.
The facility was purpose built to relocate nine existing call centres around Leeds. The project took ten months from project initiation to the first staff coming over. This included a full fit out and all technology. The new brand is being developed towards a 'Golden Number' approach, the aim is for 90% of council services to be serviced from a contact Leeds site - this includes the contact centre and several one stop shops. They have a target of 80% resolution in the first contact, plus numerous other ambitions.
The success of the initial project to allow the development of the future goals was put down to the following:
- Get the right team in place - “If you want me to build a wall, I need bricklayers, not a plumber, an electrician and a couple of gardeners”
- Ensure senior executive sponsorship - this is relatively unique, but this contact centre has the full backing of the chief executive. They have actually managed to get the contact centre into the board room!
- Don’t let the project get derailed by process and red tape - you can’t please all of the people all of the time, there will always be a resistance to change.
All in all a very successful visit, thanks to all at Leeds City Council (it was great to see you again).
On a more serious note, we just tried one new beer last night, Bombadier. This was well received and we also had Yorkshire puddings in Yorkshire with chips (the hot type skinny and fat ones) and gravy. And we are now a full contingent of people and bags again…