Liquid Voice has helped Cheshire West & Cheshire Council to streamline its call-handling procedures and improve accessibility to council services. The £45,000 CTI project is linking the council’s existing CRM and PABX systems.
The council receives more than 500,000 calls each year, with a target of answering each call within 20 seconds by one of the 80 agents at its contact centre. As part of its on-going ‘Think Customer!’ initiative, the council therefore decided that better integration between its Kana CRM system and its Avaya PABX would allow it to reduce the number of simple calls coming into the contact centre and shorten the process for customers to reach the council.
Maria Byrne, head of services, Cheshire West & Cheshire Council, said, “Like much of the public sector, we are facing challenging times and are looking at ways to improve efficiency so we are turning to technology and in particular CTI.”
The council selected Liquid Voice based on its technical capabilities and its successful CTI work with other public sector clients such as Flagship Housing and Bernicia Group.
For callers needing to speak to the council, integration with the council’s Kana CRM package means that contact centre agents and operators can see who is calling and deliver a more personalised and efficient service. Caller information is provided to the agent instantly so call handling times are reduced on every call, allowing agents to handle more calls. Byrne said, “The Liquid Voice system also helps our contact centre agents to self-manage their time better following on from each call.”
The new CTI platform has full audit and reporting capability which allows the council to effectively maintain staffing levels within the contact centre and understand trends to help better plan on-going activities and expected demand.
Julie Bellis, senior customer services manager, Cheshire West & Cheshire Council, said, “In the few months that we have been working with Liquid Voice, we have changed direction several times and they have worked with us and been very, very flexible.”
