Natural disasters can strike at any time, leaving business and residential areas without power, water and other vital services. When these events occur, municipalities are inundated with calls into the contact center by individuals seeking information, reporting failures and by those seeking assistance.

Sadly, today’s contact centers are often not equipped to handle rapid increases in volume to adequately respond to such events. Consider the recent earthquake and Hurricane Irene, and the resulting destruction. Individuals along the East Coast were left without power, forced to evacuate their homes and left without information.

Such situations highlight the need for call center software to turn yesterday’s call center into a Next-Gen Contact Center.

The Next-Gen Contact Center is made up of features and facilities that are highly functional, reliable and effective. The software in place must be designed to handle a low of 20 contacts per day or a high of 300 contacts per day. The important focus is to equip municipalities with the necessary technology to handle anticipated contact volumes – whether email, SMS, call – and those that result from an expected event or stream of events.

Municipalities investigating contact center solutions need to keep in mind that the same events that cause significant surges in contact volume could also interfere with their own employees’ ability to get to work. Therefore, the Next-Gen Contact Center must not only scale to handle such significant volume, it also needs to operate seamlessly and securely across geographically dispersed networks and locations. 

In serving the public, municipalities have to be able to respond to any situation, preparing its staff and its technologies. These agencies can make life or death differences for the public by offering the Next-Gen Contact Center that is readily available and staffed with informed agents that can answer their questions, provide necessary information and refer them to the proper agencies for additional assistance.

They must deliver high-value customer interactions resulting in first-contact resolution.

Zeacom offers its own line of contact center software to provide the optimal platform for the Next-Gen Contact Center. The company’s solutions enable agents to efficiently manage queues across all forms of media, whether it is phone, fax, e-mail, Web or callback, directly at the desktop. The company’s Presence feature allows agents to have full visibility across the entire organization to determine the availability of an agent or team member. Agents also have the ability to instant message each other for a quick answer instead of putting the customer on hold.

Zeacom’s (News - Alert) multimedia queuing ensures clients are not passed around, but instead routed to the appropriate person the first time to gain access to a quick and knowledgeable response. E-mails can be promptly addressed as they are delivered to a queue instead of an inbox, and faxes are received at the desktop. Callers can also be informed of their status in the calling queue and automated responses inform callers of the status of their respective inquiry.

In all, natural disasters or other events that demand a response from local, state or national government agencies can turn into chaos when the right tools are lacking in the call center. Zeacom’s contact center software designed for the Next-Gen Contact Center can prevent this chaos and help to promote a more satisfying experience for the center and its constituents.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.