Building 5 at the Pinal County Complex in Florence is abuzz with activity five days a week. A sound machine plays a steady stream of static-y white noise. The sound machine is state-of-the-art technology allowing workers to answer calls in close proximity by blocking the sound of other voices around them. Building 5 is the home of Pinal County’s Citizen Contact Center, which opened June 27th, 2007.
One year later, the staff has responded to more than 116,700 phone calls. For the first half of 2008, the center has received more than 77,100 calls putting them on target to handle more than 150,000 calls by the end of the year.
“Right now, we’re averaging about 15,000 calls per month & growing,” said Jerry Keely, the county’s Customer Service Administrator who is responsible for managing & expanding the Citizen Contact Center. “The idea for the centralized call center came from the Board of Supervisors. They wanted a better, more consistent flow of information to the public. Before, people had to guess who to call, sleuth out a number & face getting routed around from person to person until their question was answered.”
Keely touted an “answer rate” of almost 75%, meaning that almost three quarters of the callers receive a satisfactory answer to their question without having to bounce the call to someone else. This, he said, is an extremely important number that is almost “unheard of” for a new call center.
For the month of June, 80% of calls were answered in less than 20 seconds. The national standard is just 80% of calls answered within 60 seconds, according to recommendations from the Citizen Service Levels Interagency Committee (CSLIC), a national organization that establishes guidelines for customer service from government agencies.
Just focusing on the call volume fails to capture the entire picture of what staffers at the Citizen Contact Center do. Staffers are tasked to answer thousands of voice mails & email inquiries from people looking for services from Pinal County. In the event of a flood, wildfire or any other serious emergency in Pinal County the Citizen Contact Center would be on the “front lines” as a first point of contact for the public. Employees also provide support to various county offices by helping with mass mailings, stuffing envelopes & labeling while they’re on the phone or when call volume is lighter.
“Most of the center’s success is directly attributed to the quality & enthusiasm of our call center’s staff,” Keely said. “The rest is made up by having a good call center technology vendor, a clear vision & support from the Board of Supervisors, County Manager & elected officials.”
“I came from the private sector & had never worked in government. I didn’t really know what to expect but I knew we could deliver what the county leadership wanted,” Keely added.
Keely joined Pinal County in June 2006 after a 10-year career planning, launching & managing call centers for United Airlines’ Mileage Plus program. Keely spent his first few months meeting with various county officials to discuss their needs & formulate a plan for the scope of the project.
“Pinal County officials set a very ambitious goal but we met it. Other counties have been astonished to learn that we went from request for proposal to call center in just 6 months,” Keely said.
Typically, call centers such as Pinal County’s are set up by purchasing customizable software & hardware, then spending months programming it to do what you want it to do. Instead, Pinal County opted to contract with a call center technology vendor for a “hosted solution” that eliminates the need to have all the engineers, technicians & programmers on staff. The contract allows the county to bring the entire system in-house at the point that it becomes cost-effective to do so. Because of the wide variety of topics people call about, the Citizen Contact Center staff is developing a knowledge base of questions & answers that can eventually be deployed to the rest of the county staff &, once perfected, to the Pinal County website.
The next feature Keely & his team plan to launch is a live chat feature through the Pinal County website, enabling residents to interact with a customer service representative without having to place a call.
So when is the best time to call?
“Not at lunchtime on Mondays,” Keely said with a grin. “Mondays are our busiest day & the lunch hour is when we tend to see our hold times go up. If you need an answer fast, call in the mornings or afternoons, preferably later in the week.”
The Citizen Contact Center operates Monday through Friday from 8 am to 5 pm. After hours calls roll into a voice mail system & are answered on the next business day. The local number is (520) 509-3555. The toll free number is (888) 431-1311.