MatsSoft

Government

There are over 300 contact centres serving the public sector.

The Varney Report (2006) identified that the cost of operating these contact centres was around £4 billion per annum and went on to suggest that cost savings of up to 25% of this figure were possible by improving operational efficiency.

This would give the tax payer a better return cost-wise, but it was clear that these savings could not be at the expense of reduced service levels to the general public.

One of the key areas identified that could reduce operating costs is that of 'Avoidable Contact', namely so called 'chaser' phone calls in and out of contact centres that can be avoided if customers are proactively kept up to date with the progress of their enquiry or application so that they no longer need to make calls to chase progress.

The so called 'NI14' initiative from central government is intended to establish a reporting framework for local authorities and others to be able to report back with their assessment of the volumes of avoidable calls they believe can be driven out of the system - the only problem being that many such organisations have no means of collecting this data.

So, whilst MATS clearly offers the eventual solution to deliver long term and measurable call avoidance by pushing key stage progress updates out to customers by SMS, email and web, so they have no need to make chaser calls, in the short term there is no way of collecting the data to validate this known, but unquantified need.

As a result MatsSoft has developed a simplified version of the MATS software called MATS Call Logger, which is used to categorise incoming calls and identify those which are deemed avoidable.

Results have been excellent from our early deployments and we are now developing programmes with other local authorities and county councils on a weekly basis.