Councils save £1.4m per year on contact centre

A partnership of 10 local authorities in Staffordshire has saved millions by consolidating its procurement processes.

Staffordshire Connects - a joint venture focused around providing customer services - has invested in contact centre and customer relationship management technology on behalf of the local authorities from Macfarlane Telesystems, reaping an initial saving of £1.8m by buying together. Up to £1.4m per year will also be saved on joint maintenance and operational costs, once the CRM system is able to resolve 80 per cent of service requests at the first point of contact.

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One of the leaders of the group, Stoke-on-Trent City Council, has already managed to reach a first-time-resolution rate of 85 per cent.

Stoke-on-Trent customer strategy manager, Sharon Dawson, intends to take on the calls to two other local authorities, initially covering out-of-hours enquiries. The capacity for shared service will also enable the centre to take on other projects in the pipe-line, such as a helpline for a panemic flu outbreak. In a statement, she said: "With Stoke at the hub of the activity, Staffordshire had a great deal of capacity to remain at the forefront of local government contact centre service provision."

The systems are based on Macfarlane's CallPlus platform, which allows the authorities' contact centres to monitor traffic and predict future demand. The platform also offers queue messaging, providing service information to callers and reducing the number of calls that need to be transferred to a call agent.