The absurdity of council call centres being manned only in work hours, when residents are themselves at work and therefore unable to call, could soon be at an end as council contact centres move towards remote working.
As working patterns change and technology empowers more people to work from home, remote working solutions enable council call centre staff to work outside of core hours, from home.
There are huge benefits in this for residents, who are living in an omni-channel world, accustomed to being able to shop, bank and order services online whenever they like, and who have come to expect the same options from their public sector services.
The challenge for local government is to adjust its mindset and overcome the notion that ‘if you’re not there, you’re not working.’
This necessary shift in mindset could well be worth it financially because, as well as reducing the need for expensive office space, a remote working solution like BT’s Cloud Contact ‘flexes’ up and down as agents come on and go off, allowing councils to pay for what they need, when they need it.
This ability to flex in response to demand is as very important to council call centres which are more prone to call flurries than retail or service based call centres; school admissions time or council tax renewals always prompt increased traffic to telephone numbers.
Councils can scale the number of agents quickly, from 25 to 1,000, and only pay for what is used on a per agent per month basis, avoiding the need for capital expenditure, with the only real requirement being an internet connection, a browser and a phone.
A cloud contact solution allows agents to email or use web chat, and intelligent call routing means they’re getting calls they can deal with immediately rather than having to toggle between different systems.
In addition, cloud contact solutions tend to improve caller satisfaction as calls are answered faster, queries are resolved more quickly and reporting data means efficiency can be improved.
Cloud contact centre hubs also make it easier for local councils to service-share, usually combining the services of two or more districts and providing a centralised point of contact for resolving all residents’ queries.
So with all the evidence stacked up showing us that cloud call centres are undeniably a positive step for local councils, how can the sceptical mind-set about remote working be changed?
Maybe change is already on its way. Public sector CIOs acknowledge that they will have to consider novel ways to make the most of technology and managers will use external service provisions to scale their resources up or down on-demand, without affecting core production systems. As many as 47% of public sector CIOs refer to the need to increase agile working, showing that this move towards mobile working and cloud is already underway.
BT’s research confirms that the public sector is already beginning to think along these lines. More than a third (34%) of technology chiefs are most likely to buy IT services through the G-Cloud, the UK government’s procurement network. In fact, G-Cloud sales rose by £57m in August 2015 to hit a total of £753m as momentum continues in public sector cloud spending.
Perhaps now is the time for local councils to get their heads out of the sand and in the Cloud.
Michael White is local government partnership director, BT Global Services, and former leader of Havering LBC
