ISV Software helps Leeds city council fill contact centre vacancies

Leeds City Council has launched a recruitment programme with the Jobs and Skills service to fill contact centre vacancies and help the long-term unemployed return to work. A new Contact Centre Academy will be using the latest Call Centre Training programme from ISV Software to provide staff with the skills required to deliver high levels of service to callers at the authorityís new 2.8 million purpose built contact centre that opened for business in March 2006.

The new flagship contact centre in West Gate, Leeds forms part of the Contact Leeds initiative and represents a major overhaul of the councilís call centre operations. It will consolidate the significant progress that has already been made in customer services and help establish the authority as a regional Centre of Excellence.

ISV Software was selected to provide its Academy Call Centre Training programme, as it is the only vendor able to provide single integrated solution including call centre training, recruitment and selection. It also features a Rapid Development Toolkit that provides the ability to quickly produce custom programmes to tailor the assessments and training to meet the requirements of specific processes or departments.

According to Paddy Clarke, head of Contact Centres at Leeds City Council: ìISVís Call Centre Training programme will play an important role in raising internal quality and productivity standardsî

The ISV programme will be used by the Academy throughout the training course where twelve students will learn core contact centre skills. Students are provided with full replication of live software including keyboard shortcut keys in a simulated contact centre environment to give a more realistic feel to the training. It also gives students more realistic training on the listening, keyboard and data entry, literacy, numeracy and spelling skills required by agents working in the new contact centre.

The Academy was developed as part of a wider strategic change programme being undertaken by the council, which includes the merging of services. It will also help meet the requirements for cross training and upskilling existing staff with the core skills needed

The new contact centre will better meet the needs of customers by offering a single point of access and extended opening hours for a range of council services including social services, housing and the key environmental services such as highways and refuse collection. Calls relating to anti-social behaviour issues, complaints and emergencies are also now handled in the centre.

Around 300 qualified staff will be employed by this new contact centre, which has the capacity to handle over 30,000 calls per week and 1.5 million calls per year. The aim is to eventually be available to handle calls from 08:00-20:00 during the week as well as providing a Saturday morning service. Customers will be able to communicate with the centre by telephone, email, SMS and through the council website.

Laurie Dobson, Managing director of ISV Software, comments: ìOur Call Centre Training programme will enable agents to achieve 99.8% accuracy levels based on 5000 keystrokes per operator per hour. Experience shows that, based on a number of other successful deployments, productivity and quality levels will increase by more than 15% and there will be a significant reduction in staff churn as a direct result of improved job satisfaction and morale.î