Northern Beaches Council supports community following superstorm using Cloud-based services

More than 250,000 residents from Sydney’s Northern Beaches Council were greatly impacted by the ‘superstorm’ on the weekend of the 9^th February 2020, which caused major damage including fallen trees, flash flooding and fallen powerlines. During the storm, the council’s customer service contact centre received an influx of calls from residents requiring urgent assistance. With their newly implemented contact centre system, the Telstra Contact Centre Genesys Cloud platform, their agents were able to log in remotely, as well as in the office, to swiftly respond to more than 150 calls over six-hours on a Sunday afternoon. This is a service they could not have provided using their old call centre system.

Calls made to the Northern Beaches Council customer service line on weekends normally go to an outsourced after-hours service, which can sometimes have a call wait time of up to 20 minutes. However, with the knowledge that significant storm damage was likely over the weekend, the team volunteered to work to answer residents calls, reducing the call wait time down to an average of only 27 seconds. Agents were able to reassure residents, provide the most up-to-date information and offer an efficient service that was sensitive to customer needs.

Due to the impact of the storm, some agents were unable to travel to the office, however, they safely worked from home while caring for customer needs. Rochelle O’Hagan, Call Centre Co-ordinator and Northern Beaches Council resident, had an emergency of her own as a result of the storm with a fallen power pole across her driveway and power outage at her home. Nevertheless, she was able to work remotely, switching the contact centre from the after-hours service to the fully manned setting and monitoring the rate of calls and wait times from her laptop.

“I had lost power at home and was waiting on assistance myself, but fortunately I was able to easily access the Genesys system from my laptop and take calls on my mobile. We were able to speak directly to our residents, rather than pass them to the after-hours service team who take care of a larger area. Genesys Cloud enabled us to provide personalised, up-to-date and efficient information to our residents, resulting in a superior customer experience in their hour of need,” said Ms O’Hagan.

In the days following the storm, the contact centre team again experienced a huge influx of calls, responding to over 1,500 enquiries over the course of one day, more than 30 per cent above their daily average. Contact centre staff were able to maintain the average call wait time of 1 minute and 59 seconds. The capabilities of the Telstra Contact Centre Genesys Cloud system enabled Northern Beaches Council to provide centralised and critical support for distressed residents by combining intelligent technology with the emotional intelligence of their agents.

Genesys Vice President Australia and New Zealand, Mark Buckley, is proud that the company was able to support such a vital service and ensure the council could respond appropriately to meet the needs of residents during such a difficult time.

“We are glad that Genesys and Telstra were able to assist Northern Beaches Council and their community through this disaster. In crises like these, every second matters and contact centre agents need to work quickly to resolve customer issues as swiftly as possible while still providing a high level of empathy to those they are assisting. The desire of the team to be the ones answering their residents’ calls speaks volumes to the dedication and passion they have for the local community. We aim to support this level of empathy for all our customers so they can, in turn, provide a seamless and highly positive experience for their customers,” said Mr Buckley.

Genesys and Telstra are strong believers in delivering personalised and empathetic service in all circumstances to ensure customers receive the best possible outcome.  Technology paired with human understanding allows agents to fully understand their customer’s problems and provide them with a personalised experience to tackle their unique set of circumstances and the support they need in that instance.

-ENDS-

NOTES TO EDITORS

Peak performance through the Telstra-Genesys partnership

The Genesys and Telstra partnership in delivering Contact Centre Solutions spans more than 15 years.

Genesys is recognised as a market leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant (Contact Centre Infrastructure and Contact Centre as a Service). Telstra has been Frost & Sullivan’s Hosted Contact Centre Provider of the year from 2009-2017 and is also the Genesys Asia Pacific Cloud Partner of the Year 2019.

As a Genesys partner, Telstra offers a depth and breadth of capability unmatched by competitors. Telstra offers Genesys Cloud with a fully hosted network in Australia. The fully hosted model eliminates the need for additional investment in voice networks and on-premises equipment. This cost-efficient, low maintenance solution uses virtualised infrastructure to reduce overhead and enable rapid scalability.

About Genesys

Every year Genesys® delivers more than 70 billion remarkable customer experiences for organisations in over 100 countries. Through the power of the cloud and AI, our technology connects every customer moment across marketing, sales and service on any channel, while also improving employee experiences. Genesys pioneered Experience as a Service^SM so organisations of any size can provide true personalisation at scale, interact with empathy, and foster customer trust and loyalty. This is enabled by Genesys Cloud^TM, an all-in-one solution and the world’s leading public cloud contact centre platform, designed for rapid innovation, scalability and flexibility. Visit https://www.genesys.com/en-sg

About Telstra

Visit https://www.telstra.com.au/aboutus

Media Contacts

APAC:

Manali Pattnaik, Senior Public Relations Manager, APAC, Genesys

manali.pattnaik@genesys.com

+65 8321 7924 | +65 9126 9831

 Australia:

Yvette Schlegelmilch, Account Manager, ZADRO

yvette@zadroagency.com.au

+61 2 9212 7867 | +61 423 954 224