Technology is changing our world at an impressive pace. As funding decreases and expectations increase, councils need to use new technology to more efficiently deliver services and increase their own productivity. Councils, including the North Norfolk District Council, are very aware of their need to stay digitally relevant. Despite the new challenges they face, councils always need to be able to provide a satisfactory experience to their residents and businesses. To stay credible and inspire continuous confidence, they must be ready to transition to and invest in new digital infrastructures and contact centre solutions.
The NNDC was struggling to keep up with the number of calls they received every day, so C3 was asked to replace their existing contact centre solution and provide a smooth transition to a reliable and cost-efficient alternative.
The NNDC’s former solution was voice only, not allowing agents to interact with residents by email, webchat or SMS. While voice only solutions are still seen as the leading communication method, nowadays contact centres need to be able to easily deal with queries from different channels. Customers like to have a choice, some people feel more comfortable speaking over the phone, while others prefer using social media or email.
In addition to an updated and higher performing multi-channel contact centre solution, the NNDC wanted a system to better manage ad-hoc walk-in meeting requests. These meeting requests were not integrated with the rest of the contact centre management. The lack of internal communication led to the disorganisation of the whole system, consequently increasing waiting times for customers and stress for the agents.
The existing IVR and adapter were in urgent need of replacement as they frequently failed. The incumbent had become too difficult to manage and maintain, diminishing staff performance.
On a daily basis, the platform processes a considerable amount of traffic, so it was important that our solution was reliable, robust and customisable. With our solutions, we also offer 24/7 support to ensure better customer experience and prevent any major issues from happening.
After half a day of training and some support from our team, the new contact centre configuration was completely set up. The intuitive web-based interface was found to be really helpful, as well as easy to understand and use.
Once fully installed and running, our new solution was able to provide the NNDC with comprehensive statistics stored after each consultation. This helps them to identify the key reasons for calls and the nature of their resolution. Now, agents’ supervisors can check live wallboards to see how busy a department is and take the decision to proactively manage agent availability, lowering waiting times and reducing stress.
Finally, agents were also able to improve their performance in order to always provide a satisfying experience to their customers.
At C3, we always want to make sure our customers are satisfied, so we organised a follow-up meeting with the NNDC to address any potential issues or concerns. The NNDC first chose our services and solutions for our unbeatable prices, but during this meeting, we were told that we exceeded their expectations. They were very satisfied with our services and they didn’t experience any disruption. Our agents made sure to be responsive, adaptive and understanding of their needs and demands at all times.
Based on this excellent first experience, we decided to continue our relationship going forward. During the last couple of years, the NNDC has asked us to integrate additional functionalities such as a greater granularity for reporting purposes. Some of these functionalities were added free of charge as part of our ‘customer wishlist’ process. The NNDC has purchased additional updates and numerous upgrades, including custom wallboards, an additional ‘disaster recovery’ site and additional agent licences.