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"Once we get a sense of what those benefits can be, we can work with the city business to see where there might be other savings and additional benefits - things like unified communications, presence features (telepresence) and conferencing," says Harris-Campbell.
Initially it's not going to be a transformational business change, she adds. IP could benefit workflow processes in the 311 call centre, but the city's existing applications already do that.
As well, there's the risk of negatively impacting business continuity. For example, the call centre has a GIS mapping system in SAP. "Integrating this with VoIP isn't something we've looked at, because of the highly available nature of the call centre."
Dial this number first
Toronto's proposed 311 call centre would be the logical group to initiate VoIP because of the quick return on investment gained by the sheer volume of calls and operational efficiencies, notes Colleen Bell, 311 project lead.
For example, VoIP allows call centre agents to do their jobs remotely. In the event of a storm or another emergency where agents can't get to work, they could log into the system and still answer citizen inquiries from home.
"All 311 operations in the U.S. have a really important role to play in an emergency situation," says Bell. "It makes a big difference in offloading non-emergency calls from 911."
The City of Vancouver has identified a number of advantages in moving to VoIP and in November 2006 submitted to Council its report from a study on 311 VoIP services.
The report cites improved customer service through consolidation of call-handling; business continuity from easier phone relocation; and operational efficiencies like network management; presenting e-mail, fax and voice messages through a single interface (unified messaging); and easier generation of call statistics.
Vancouver's director of IT, Roger Fast, has been appointed program director of a new business unit called Access Vancouver, to oversee the implementation of VoIP, a consolidated 311 call centre and an electronic records and documents management system.
VoIP project manager Peter Underwood says the city simply cannot afford to be on the bleeding edge of technology, but VoIP has proven itself to be strong and stable. "Our responsibility is to mitigate the risks," he says.
Underwood expects the first two phases of the VoIP implementation will target the 311 call centre and the Vancouver Police Department, which is on "a fairly expensive" hosted Centrex system.
Vancouver currently buys Centrex services from both Bell and Telus Corp. for many of its internal clients like parks boards, libraries and other community services.
"So while the city will be getting increased functionality and new features, the technology's strong net present value is equally important," says Fast.
"And if we're going to create a new call centre, then we should provision it with VoIP capability so that we don't have to retrofit it later on."
Continued:Taking phone ownership
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