NSW Department of Communities and Justice Rapidly Responds to Residents During Bushfire Crisis with Help from Genesys

The New South Wales Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) brings together all NSW government services targeted at achieving safe, just, inclusive and resilient communities under one roof. The DCJ provides housing services to some of the most disadvantaged individuals, families and communities in NSW and responds to more than one million housing enquiries from residents each year. During Australia’s horrific bushfire season, which resulted in mass evacuations across remote communities and popular holiday destinations, DCJ needed to quickly expand its capacity to deal with a massive influx of enquiries and find emergency accommodation for those displaced by the fires.

Throughout November and December last year, 400 contact centre agents were responsible for answering 66,000 calls each month as a part of normal resourcing. However, the events of New Year’s Eve caused Disaster Welfare Assistance call volumes to increase by 281% throughout January. To handle this surge, DCJ needed to quickly ramp up capacity in the Housing Contact Centre, adding 40 new agents and establish a new phone line in less than three hours using Genesys Multicloud CX™.

According to Wendy Keith, Director of the Housing Contact Centre at NSW Department of Communities and Justice, “It was essential our contact centre could manage the increase in enquiries to ensure we could help all those displaced by the fires. We needed to respond quickly to make sure people had a safe place to stay. There is no way we could have done this without cloud technology from Genesys®. The around-the-clock support we received enabled our agents to feel confident to move mountains in order to help those who needed it.”

At the peak of the bushfires, on New Year’s Eve and in the following days, the volume of calls skyrocketed. On one day alone, 5 January 2020, DCJ needed to find accommodation for over 1,500 displaced residents, which meant taking 1,500 incoming calls and making at least 1,500 calls to source accommodation.

“Using the Genesys Multicloud CX platform meant there was no interruption to the service we provided, as it allowed us to respond to enquiries across phone, email and online using the one system. This made the whole process much more efficient and helped us ensure nothing fell through the cracks. Without this platform it would have been impossible for us to provide outcomes to so many people on the same day,” said Ms Keith.

Since 8 November 2019, DCJ has assisted nearly 8,000 bushfire-affected individuals to find temporary and longer-term accommodation, totalling more than 18,000 nights of assistance. The organisation also continues to support communities as the after-effects of the bushfires are still felt.

Mark Buckley, Vice President Australia and New Zealand, Genesys commended the DCJ for the great work they do to assist all NSW residents. “The support DCJ provided to distressed residents and tourists during the bushfires was significant. This crisis put everyone to the test, but their team showed grace under pressure, displaying huge amounts of care and empathy to help those in desperate need. At Genesys, we’re incredibly proud that our cloud technology helped played a key role in supporting the whole community in such a difficult time,” said Mr Buckley.

-ENDS-

NOTES TO EDITORS 

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 ServiceSM 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 CloudTM, 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.

Media contacts

Genesys 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

+61 423 954 224