Unified Communications helps Northampton Council achieve Service Excellence

Council extends its investment in Macfarlane CallPlus technology with new Choice-Based Lettings application

Northampton Borough Council, the largest district council in England, has achieved the Customer Service Excellence award following a series of investments to improve customer choice, enhance service levels and cut wastage.

In the last two years, the Council has:

- extended the number of services delivered through its Customer Contact Centre
- launched a Choice-Based Lettings service that allows homeseekers to bid for new homes by phone, SMS or over the web
- introduced a sophisticated and integrated workforce management and scheduling system

An extensive range of Council services are now provided through the Centre including: Housing Repairs, Housing Customer Services, Cleansing (waste, graffiti etc.), Complaints, 'Councillor Contact Centre', switchboard answering for general enquires, Environmental Health, Housing Needs, Tenancy Support, Council Tax, Benefits and Rent Income. The Centre currently employs 33 personnel and handles around 6250 customer calls per week.

Adding Choice-Based Lettings Capabilities

Call handling and unified communications technology from Macfarlane Telesystems has been at the heart of Northampton’s Customer Contact Centre since it opened in June 2006.

Macfarlane CallPlus technology intelligently routes all incoming calls to appropriate Advisors, records calls, and provides both automated call handling (IVR) and detailed management reporting. .

In June 2008, the Council invested in Macfarlane’s Choice-Based Lettings module to give citizens a flexible and automated means of bidding for new homes. The software enables Homeseekers to register their interest in a property by entering details on the Council’s Homechoice web site, calling an automated phone service, or by SMS texting. For SMS applications, the Macfarlane system automatically texts individuals to confirm that their bids have been received, whereas for phone applications the caller is given a live update on their home choice.

The Council’s Choice-Based Lettings scheme has proven very successful. “Feedback from everyone that’s used the system has been extremely positive” says Alison Hacking, Choice-Based Lettings Project Manager, Northampton Borough Council, who says that Macfarlane has been very responsive and supportive throughout the implementation process. “Macfarlane will always make sure there is a professional and knowledgable back-up personnel available. They have also been able to explain issues in non-technical terms, which has greatly helped our understanding of projects from beginning to end.”

Integrated Workforce Management

In March 2009, Northampton integrated its Macfarlane CallPlus technology with workforce management software from Q-Max. Q-Max enables Northampton’s contact centre management to calculate, in advance, the number of advisors required to respond to customer demand, ensuring there are sufficient advisors, with the right skills, available at all times. It also creates staff rotas to ensure advisors are available, thereby automating what was previously a hugely time-consuming task.

CallPlus sends data to Q-Max in real time, enabling Q-Max to run an alert window that constantly monitors call traffic and compares it to historic traffic patterns for the same period. This capability allows Contact Centre Management to immediately see changes in call traffic trends and use Q-Max to suggest ways of responding to them. This allows a fluidity of resource allocation that is not possible with a manual system.