Essex County Council has set up an Essex Welfare Service using a cloud based contact centre solution to enable its call handlers to work remotely.
It provides a single point of contact for welfare services, handling requests for support and volunteer registration, coordinated by the community interest company Provide CIC, with an initial focus on supporting people through the coronavirus pandemic.
The service has been set up with audio-visual communications provider Cinos and data analytics company Tiger, both of which donated their services free of charge.
It involves a contact centre solution based on Cinos’s Stellaris conferencing service and supporting 400 call handlers, all working remotely. It was set up in a week and is now averaging 700 calls per day.
Ken Ngai, technology operations manager at Provide CIC, said: “Typically, we’d expect a project like this to take a month to roll out but the team at Cinos put in a considerable amount of effort to make this happen in such a short space of time.
“The new system allows our call handlers to take calls at home with minimal equipment, helping us deliver vital services to the people that need them most. Furthermore, with the Tiger software, we are able to measure performance and incoming call demand in real time, so that we can adapt staffing levels when needed.”
