Call Center Management Featured Article
City of Buffalo Moves Quickly for 311 Cloud Contact Center Amid COVID-19 Shutdowns
The global pandemic and COVID-19 shutdowns that began months ago here in the U.S. have changed how businesses operate and how employees work. In New York, which became one of the first hotspots for the virus in the nation, the need to practice social distancing and connect workplaces remotely was a massive shift that not everyone was prepared for.
In Buffalo, the second-largest city in New York state with a population of 250,000 and home to a crucial Citizen Services Division that meant ensuring no downtime from when shutdown mandates were announced (on a Friday), and they reopened on Monday morning.
The call center can take anywhere from 600 calls a day from residents and needed to keep access to this service up and running even with office closures.
That goal was achieved thanks to help from the city’s long-time partner, Cisco (News - Alert), and its Webex Contact Center Quick Deploy Solution.
In just 48 hours, the city was able to take its 311 Call & Resolution Center online so agents could work from home and have calls routed to them. When Monday morning came around, their remote agents were able to work and take calls without a hiccup.
Cisco developed the Webex Contact Center solution as increased demands amid the pandemic to allow agents to work from home came pouring in. With the Quick Deployment solution, businesses can deploy a cloud contact center solution and gain access to agent software with a robust set of omnichannel, routing, and reporting capabilities for up to 1,000 concurrent agents. The offering can go live in as little as five days, and there is only a short term (12 months) commitment required.
Like the city of Buffalo, many businesses have found themselves in a situation where they needed to still offer communications to customers and didn’t already a contact center solution in place or access via the cloud. Cisco is making it possible for these businesses to quickly and cost-effectively maintain operations and scale as needed during times of crisis and uncertainty.
Edited by Maurice Nagle