The City of Charles Sturt has installed a new phone system that embraces some of the best advances in software.
Acting Manager Information Services Janelle Sollitto said Charles Sturt’s existing phone system was reaching ‘end of life’, meaning it was going to become more difficult and costly to support in the future.
“We had also recently installed Microsoft Office Communicator and integrated this system with Council’s SharePoint environment to provide staff clear information,” she said.
“There was more benefit to be gained from integrating Office Communicator with the telephone system, which was not possible with the previous system.
“The focus was also on redundancy across the various Council sites, meaning we worked to ensure we had a phone system that was as resistant as possible to ‘down time’ caused by service interruptions.”
Charles Sturt is located west of the Central Business District of Adelaide, South Australia, where it serves a population of approximately 105,000.
The deployment of new phone handsets to all personel occurred over one weekend. Staff used the old phone system until Friday night, and on Monday switched over to the new system using the new handsets.
Training was available and taken up by many staff. Tip sheets and other support information was available on the staff Intranet.
The call centre management system selected to form part of the new solution provides better reporting. Call recording has also been set up for training and coaching purposes.
Janelle Sollitto said that after undertaking a tender process evaluating solutions from multiple vendors, a Mitel unified communication solution based on the company’s Freedom architecture was chosen.
The solution comprised the Mitel Communications Director (MCD), Contact Center Enterprise, Intelligent Queue and Live Business Gateway.
Council services are delivered by a team of 450 employees, with the majority of employees located at large facilities at the Civic and Beverley Centres, with all locations connected via a private IP wide area network.
For further information contct acting Manager Information Services Janelle Sollitto on (08) 8408 1111.
