Rochdale Contact Centre

Improving the customer service experience

The Challenge
Rochdale Council received up to 10,000 calls each day, with telephone enquiries being handled by each service in isolation. This meant difficulties managing demand peaks and troughs, enquiries passed between services and, as a result, an estimated 28% of all calls were unanswered or engaged.

As a council constantly striving to improve customer services, Rochdale required a technology driven and integrated approach to deal with enquiries centrally – and turned for help to partner Agilisys, with whom they had recently formed the Impact Partnership.

Agilisys had to establish a single contact centre responding to incoming enquiries on behalf of the Council. This would not only directly address service transformation but would also provide opportunities to deliver economic gains by creating job opportunities.

The Solution
Within two months of Impact’s launch the new 75-seat contact centre was established providing the first phase of council services. The new contact centre was developed on the ‘one-stop-shop’ model of service delivery and now deals with enquiries across the full range of services provided by the Council. In the majority of cases fully trained advisors can handle all enquiries at the first point of contact, and service levels have been improved by extended opening hours with early morning, evening and Saturday staffing.

The contact centre transition from the Council’s existing service follows a secondment model with Council staff transferred to the centre following a rigorous assessment process. The transition programme was phased over 24 months, during which time 12 of the 18 main services were transferred into the centre.

A leading Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system now enables the Council to build a better understanding of customer needs and provides high quality, joined-up and consistent services across a number of delivery channels.

The Benefits
Since its launch the centre has become a flagship project for Impact, combining many aspects of the Partnership’s ambitions of service transformation and local job creation.

The centre is also now used for customer care services on behalf of private sector clients in the healthcare and financial services sectors; an example of how the centre has created further local employment opportunities and bring major UK companies into Rochdale. Since establishing the centre in June 2007 Agilisys has created over 200 fully trained jobs within the borough. This is planned to grow to 400 jobs over the life of the partnership.

The contact centre produced immediate improvements for the Council and now provides a platform from which the partnership can attract new clients and deliver economic growth. Key benefits include:
The introduction of specialist skills and technology to significantly transform service levels, including improved call response rates
Improved management information about customer contact and service delivery
More efficient use of resources with back office staff released to concentrate on specialist work
The creation of 200 jobs, with a total of 400 new jobs expected over Impact’s contract period
Encouraging leading UK business to outsource customer service activities in Rochdale