Argyll and Bute council turn to VoIP for CS centre

Customer services (CS) calls to Argyll and Bute council in Scotland have been switched over to VoIP in order to give employees more mobility in their work.

A virtual CS centre went live last month starting with all calls about council tax being handled at a single location in Campbeltown by four council workers.

By using VoIP technology, the council has been able to share common technology resources across sites, such as integrating the VoIP system with the council tax system so that they do not have to login to two separate systems and information can be shared across both.

Mhairi Renton, CS centre manager for Argyll and Bute council said that before the VoIP was introduced "calls came into various council offices and were answered within hunt groups. We had no record of how many customer calls were being answered, how long they lasted or how many calls were being abandoned."

However, the new system allows employees to look up "all that information plus more".

"We can plan better for peak calling times and, if a call report throws up issues, we can rectify them," she explained.

The current trial voice setup is planned to expand across a range of services and over more sites during the coming months of 2007, including fielding calls about benefits, street lighting and roads, leisure booking and the council's library catalogue.

And then in 2008, the council hopes to spread VoIP across its services, including the complex planning department.