Today's fast-paced digital landscape and increased service expectations urge many organizations in the public sector to innovate their service experiences. One of those is Leicestershire County Council. Exceeding 750,000 inhabitants, it is one of the more densely populated regions outside of major metropolitan areas. Even so, Leicestershire retains a sense of community and fosters a welcoming environment for residents and visitors alike.
To better service those residents and visitors, they embarked on a journey to transform more than 20 of their contact centers. A key prerequisite was to utilize their existing investments in Microsoft technology to its fullest extent. The County Council transitioned from their legacy Alcatel platform to Anywhere365 Dialogue Management on top of Microsoft 365.
Leicestershire County Council oversees a wide range of public services, such as education, social care, transportation and waste management. All these services together receive on average 49,000 of calls per month. However, the Council's contact centers operated on a legacy Alcatel platform, tying agents to physical desks and impeding flexibility in dialogue handling.
The three most pressing challenges with their Alcatel legacy systems were:
The Council needed to find a more modern solution to improve operations and enable agents to deliver customer service to residents.
Looking to solve these challenges, back in 2019, Leicestershire County Council searched for a contemporary contact center solution aligned with their Microsoft infrastructure. Being one of a few vendors with a product that was fully aligned to Microsoft’s UC strategy, Leicestershire County Council turned to Anywhere365.
The deployment of Anywhere365 was a success, migrating 20 contact centers within only four weeks. This short timeframe enabled front-line services to swiftly resume operations, including the main Customer Service Centre, Childrens First Response, Registrars, and an essential COVID-19 response line. The adaptability of Anywhere365's solutions allowed for customized configurations tailored to the unique needs of each contact center. For example, flexibility to change opening hours per skill, call recordings turned on or off, voicemail options, quality monitoring and more.
The council saw immediate success of the transition all around. Contact centre managers were extremely positive, as they could re-open their phone lines well within the expected time frame. They also found the reporting very insightful and much more detailed compared to what they previously had.
Agents valued their first remote work experiences. The simple-to-use and intuitive interface of Anywhere365’s single-screen digital workplace made agents happier and paid off in terms of productivity. Supervisors found their options for listening in and helping on calls to be beneficial. And the real-time reporting provided good insights into their dispersed workforce’s SLAs.
Building upon its success in telephony, Leicestershire County Council expanded service channels. First for internal customers. Email had always been a time consuming and resource intensive channel for the IT service desk to manage. They introduced webchat in 2021 and after positive feedback, the IT service desk phased out email. The abandonment rate for webchat dialogues is only around 3%, significantly below market average. The web forms have been invaluable in achieving this.
The shift towards webchat exemplifies the council’s commitment to enhancing accessibility and efficiency in customer interactions. Today, approximately one out of five contacts with the IT service desk are being handled via webchat. A large portion of dialogues is now taken care of through self-serve. Partly through webchat canned responses and pre-defined adaptive cards, but also by routing people to the IT self-service portal.
In January 2023, as part of their broader digital transformation, the Council migrated from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams. This migration marked another milestone in Leicestershire County Council's journey towards a unified communication ecosystem.
Anywhere365 Dialogue Cloud was a pivotal component of this transition. It had provided an integrated contact center solution for Microsoft Teams, and agents were happy with their unified desktop environment, ensuring continuity in our service operations. The transition was completed with the deployment of Anywhere365’s low code dialogue flow builder Dialogue Studio.
A notable highlight of Leicestershire County Council's experience with Anywhere365 is the adoption of Dialogue Studio. This tool empowered their contact center managers with real-time insights and actionable data, enabling informed decision-making and strategic optimizations.
Dialogue Studio has enabled the council to achieve significant benefits. It is a drag-and-drop solution that enhances the offering through its diverse integration options. Key benefits of Dialogue Studio
were the integrations with SMS gateways and Injixo WFM, skill-based settings and support of bespoke reporting.
Looking ahead, Leicestershire County Council remains committed to refining and enhancing the customer journeys for internal customers and residents.
The success story of Leicestershire County Council shows the transformative power of innovative contact center solutions. Through strategic collaboration and the adoption of Dialogue Cloud and Dialogue Studio, they have not only modernized their operations but also elevated customer service standards. As they continue to embrace technological advancements and refine their practices, Leicestershire County Council strives to improve in the realm of public sector customer service.
