Argyll and Bute, virtually

Britannia’s technological push into the 21st century continues, with Argyll and Bute Council announcing the creation of a “virtual Customer Service Centre function” enabling advisors to work from offices distributed throughout the mainland and islands.

The process of technology-enabling the new centre started in February 2007. The Lagan Frontline software was installed and fully integrated with the Council’s Northgate Council Tax system and Civica Workflow and Electronic Document Management software by April 2007. The installation of the Council’s Cisco IP infrastructure followed, with the Macfarlane CallPlus contact centre integrated shortly thereafter.

The customer service centre is powered by a Macfarlane CallPlus VoIP solution embedded within a Cisco IP infrastructure. At Argyll and Bute, CallPlus is also tightly integrated with Lagan Frontline CRM software.

The virtual customer service centre actually went live last month; in the initial phase of deployment, council tax queries are being handled at a single centre in lovely Campbeltown. A team of four council tax advisors are currently handling around 700-800 customer calls a week.

Current plans call for deployment of the system and multiple sites and “Within months, the operation is likely to be many times bigger,” promises the council. The Council is planning to move benefits; street lighting and roads; leisure bookings; and its library catalogue into the customer service centre by December 2007.

In 2008, the Council is looking to bring planning department and other services into the centre in a rolling programme that hopes to refocus all customer-facing services into a service centre delivery model.

The Argyll and Bute councilship was formed in 1996 and comprises much of Scotland’s coastline. In fact, Argyll and Bute claims some 3,000 miles of coastline, just slightly more than all of that of France.

Founded in 1987, Macfarlane is a UK developer and supplier of communication solutions to service providers, enterprises and public sector organisations. Its CallPlus platform supports applications including a multimedia contact centre, IVR, management statistics, recording and unified communications. Macfarlane boasts strategic partnerships with vendors Lagan, Capita, Northgate, Steria and Serco.