Liquid Voice has been working with Spelthorne Borough Council as part of a project to reduce call volumes, increase the responsiveness of contact centre staff and cut costs through better staff utilisation and fewer expensive third-party contracts.
For the first phase of the project, Spelthorne brought in Liquid Voice to deliver an IP-based call recording and automatic call distribution system. This included new features such as call shadowing, along with better visibility of call durations, completions and other trends to help with staff allocation and training.
For the next phase, Liquid Voice delivered a seamless integration with Spelthorne’s Civica CRM system along with enhanced CTI to automatically route calls based on callers’ preferences while giving staff faster access to relevant information.
For the final phase, Liquid Voice enabled automated call routing based on CTI to better direct calls, such as customers with outstanding debts being automatically directed to specially-trained debt recovery staff.
Linda Norman, head of customer services, Spelthorne Borough Council, said, “In our work with Liquid Voice over the last two years, the improvements to the telephony system have been instrumental in transforming customer services while reducing our costs.
“Call volumes have fallen by 30 per cent, our abandonment rate has been halved to less than seven per cent and 80 per cent of calls are now answered within five rings. In addition, improvements in the system means that we no longer have to use third party ‘out of hours’ and ‘queue buster’ services or replace staff lost through retirement which combined equal savings of over £30,000 each year.”
