Citizen contact center reports ‘impressive results’ in first year

Building 5 at the Pinal County Complex in Florence is abuzz with activity five days a week.

A sound machine plays a steady stream of static-y white noise. The sound machine is state-of-the-art technology allowing workers to answer calls in close proximity by blocking the sound of other voices around them.

Building 5 is the home of Pinal County’s Citizen Contact Center, which opened June 27, 2007.

A year later, the staff has responded to more than 116,700 phone calls. For the first half of 2008, the center has received more than 77,100 calls putting them on target to handle more than 150,000 calls by the end of the year.

“Right now, we’re averaging about 15,000 calls per month and growing,” said Jerry Keely, the county’s Customer Service Administrator who is responsible for managing and expanding the Citizen Contact Center. “The idea for the centralized call center came from the Board of Supervisors. They wanted a better, more consistent flow of information to the public. Before, people had to guess who to call, sleuth out a number and face getting routed around from person to person until their question was answered.”

Keely touted an answer rate of almost 75 percent, meaning that almost three-quarters of the callers receive a satisfactory answer to their question without having to bounce the call to someone else.

This, he said, is an extremely important number that is almost “unheard of” for a new call center.

For the month of June, 80 percent of calls were answered in less than 20 seconds. The national standard is just 80 percent of calls answered within 60 seconds, according to recommendations from the Citizen Service Levels Interagency Committee, a national organization that establishes guidelines for customer service from government agencies.

Just focusing on the call volume fails to capture the entire picture of what staffers at the Citizen Contact Center do.

Staffers are tasked to answer thousands of voice mails and email inquiries from people looking for services from Pinal County.

In the event of a flood, wildfire or any other serious emergency in Pinal County the Citizen Contact Center would be on the “front lines” as a first point of contact for the public.

Employees also provide support to various county offices by helping with mass mailings, stuffing envelopes and labeling while they’re on the phone or when call volume is lighter.

“Most of the center’s success is directly attributed to the quality and enthusiasm of our call center’s staff,” Keely said. “The rest is made up by having a good call center technology vendor, a clear vision and support from the Board of Supervisors, County Manager and elected officials.”

“I came from the private sector and had never worked in government. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I knew we could deliver what the county leadership wanted,” Keely added.

Keely joined Pinal County in June 2006 after a 10-year career planning, launching and managing call centers for United Airlines’ Mileage Plus program. Keely spent his first few months meeting with various county officials to discuss their needs and formulate a plan for the scope of the project.

“Pinal County officials set a very ambitious goal, but we met it. Other counties have been astonished to learn that we went from request for proposal to call center in just six months,” Keely said.

Typically, call centers such as Pinal County’s are set up by purchasing customizable software and hardware, then spending months programming it to do what you want it to do. Instead, Pinal County opted to contract with a call center technology vendor for a “hosted solution” that eliminates the need to have all the engineers, technicians and programmers on staff. The contract allows the county to bring the entire system in-house at the point that it becomes cost-effective to do so.

Because of the wide variety of topics people call about, the Citizen Contact Center staff is developing a knowledge base of questions and answers that can eventually be deployed to the rest of the county staff and, once perfected, to the Pinal County Web site.

The next feature Keely and his team plan to launch is a live chat feature through the Pinal County website, enabling residents to interact with a customer service representative without having to place a call.

So when is the best time to call?

“Not at lunchtime on Mondays,” Keely said with a grin. “Mondays are our busiest day, and the lunch hour is when we tend to see our hold times go up. If you need an answer fast, call in the mornings or afternoons, preferably later in the week.”

The Citizen Contact Center operates Monday through Friday from 8 AM to 5 PM. After hours calls roll into a voice mail system and are answered on the next business day. The local number is 520-509-3555. The toll free number is 888-431-1311.

The Citizen Contact Center is the “front desk” for:

Pinal County’s Switchboard
Public Health (flu shot scheduling, measles event, discount prescription drug cards, with more services coming soon)
Public Works
Animal Care and Control
Website support for the public
Assessor
Treasurer
Emergency Management (business continuity/disaster response and recovery)
Voter Registration
Elections
Fairgrounds Events

Common Call Topics:

Animal at large, animal licensing, spay/neuter, barking dog complaints
Tax questions, tax payment questions
Non-emergency public safety questions
Building inspections, building safety
Road maintenance, potholes, routing/re-routing during construction
Planning and development
Voter information, voter registration
Election information
Questions about non-county services (IRS, Motor Vehicles other state/federal services)
Clerk of the Court, filing documents with the courts
Housing assistance
Human resources and employment

Photo courtesy of Pinal County