Queensland’s Toowoomba Regional Council is implementing a new call centre offering in a bid to boost service levels for the 157,000 residents living in the area.
According to the council's customer service manager, Malcom Angell, the decision to improve its customer service followed the amalgamation of seven shire councils - Cambooya, Clifton, Crows Nest, Jondaryan, Millmerran, Pittsworth and Rosalie - into the consolidated council in 2008.
“Currently there is a lot of disparate information around the councils and this call centre will bring that knowledge together," Angell said. "It will link the regional centres with the main council site.”
Toowoomba Regional Council is using Interactive Intelligence’s IP communications software suite, Customer Interaction Centre, and will open a 35-seat customer service call centre in March 2011.
According to Angell, the solution will enable one point of contact for all council enquiries, but still maintain a presence in each of the council's service centres, as well as provide automated routing to the correct facility or relevant council department.
The council plans to use the suite for residential, business telephone and email enquiries with the potential for handling Web chat.
Its features include automatic call distribution, interactive voice response, unified messaging, desktop faxing, softphone, presence management, multi-channel recording, and blended dialling within the contact centre.
Toowoomba Regional Council is also planning an internet and intranet upgrade. This is expected to go live in March to coincide with the new call centre.
With 157,000 residents, the council is the seventh largest, by population, of Queensland's 73 councils and has a workforce of more 1600 employees.