The Customer
Citizens Advice Scotland are Scotland’s leading advice charity. With 59 bureaus, forming Scotland’s largest independent advice network.
The Challenge
Citizens Advice Scotland had a aging telephony system and required an upgrade to meet the demand of users contacting them, ensuring it is scalable to cover all national and local services and optimises the staff resources and their helplines.
Implementation
Exchange Communications designed and implemented a bespoke Avaya IP Office solution which delivers continuous operation, create centralised services, connectivity and complete resiliency for the business.
Key Results / Benefits
Exchange Communications successfully implemented the new connectivity which provides the following benefits.
- Improved technology by creating a telephone enterprise solution with a single point of administration.
- Transforms the way Citizens Advice Bureau conduct business by offering a seamless engagement experience for both customers and employees. Regardless of their locations, devices, or applications, users have telephony, messaging, conferencing, contact centre, video and unified communications.
- Redefined availability and security delivered through business communications applications on secure platforms that are as reliable and secure as traditional voice. High availability and security are about facilitating distributed IP technology to meet traditional voice expectations.
- Resilience capabilities, such as automatic fail-over, has helped prevent service disruption by enabling any site to function as a stand-alone system until network services are restored.
Quote
Tom Sime, CEO of Exchange Communications, said: “The completion of the project to upgrade Citizens Advice Scotland’s national telephone system not only means that each of the local offices participating will be able to conduct calls more efficiently with citizens by juggling local and national calls, but immediately delivered full home working for its staff which continues to be the norm for lots of workers across the country during the pandemic.
“With citizens unable to visit local offices in person, the new system ensures Citizens Advice Scotland can support the essential services provided by the network of advisers working remotely during this pandemic and also allows more than 50 branches to work on a common platform.
George Holmes, Operations Manager at the Extra Help Unit, which is a UK-wide service managed by Citizens Advice Scotland, said: “The new system is very user friendly for our staff and makes it easy to see which agents are available to take calls and how the telephone line is performing each day.
“Upgrading our telephone system has also enabled agents to manage consumers’ calls more efficiently and has helped us to deliver a much more rounded service on the customer service journey – key whilst many navigate employment issues and financial concerns as a result of the global pandemic.
“The new softphone app provides better sound quality and as the management of agent groups is all web based, remote set up is so much easier and simpler.”