North Devon is a picturesque district on the southwest coast of England boasting sandy beaches, idyllic views, and lush countryside. It’s a beautiful part of the country, but the local council knows it takes more than scenery to keep residents happy.

North Devon District Council had been working for years juggling different communication systems, which often resulted in frustration for both staff and residents when contacting their local council. When call information left the contact centre for a specialist in the Council’s back office, there was little to no record of how that query was handled – regardless of whether action had been taken or not.

As a local council, the contact centre takes lots of calls every day, and while a majority of them are low-complexity queries that can be sorted over the phone, they still need to be logged. Previously, if someone called the council and there wasn’t an agent available due to high levels of demand, they’d be held in a queue for an extended period of time, causing many callers to hang up.  This high drop-off rate for callers forced the council to take action.

Internally, staff struggled to reach back office staff and simple updates to the platform such as changing queue messages took too long to make. Council staff Andy Tapp, Sarah Higgins, and Andrea Beasley kindly took the time to talk to us about how Zoom helped them make these headaches a distant memory.

The power of personalisation and professionalism

When searching for a new communications technology partner, the team at North Devon included their customer services team in the decision. After whittling the candidates down, Zoom was their obvious and unanimous choice. The fact that they could seamlessly perform all of their needed functions in a single platform meant supporting the council’s commitment to better customer journeys. As Sarah puts it:  “Zoom offered the best solution to drill down to individual calls and report on them. From that perspective, it was amazing. We could see if certain phones weren’t getting answered – no other system gave us that level of visibility.”

It was the Zoom team’s attentive human touch that impressed North Devon the most before, during, and after installation. The council was so taken with Zoom that they decided to involve Zoom Professional Services (PSO), our team of dedicated experts who help guide partners throughout the design, deployment, and installation of new systems.

In Andy’s own words: “The Zoom account team were absolutely cognisant of what we wanted to get on board and brought it to life on how to visualise the set-up. The time taken to personalise the presentation to us really made a difference.”

There wasn’t any time to hang around either – the team at North Devon Council set the ambitious target of only a matter of months to fully implement an entirely new Zoom ecosystem. Not only did the PSO team meet the tight deadline, but they also went above and beyond to exceed the Council’s expectations.

“They were brilliant, really responsive, right on it. We were trying to explain what we needed but unless you’re in that world day to day, it’s sometimes hard to understand those needs. They got it straight away”, Andy says.

Reports, re-dials, and resolutions

Along with uniting all the council’s telephony needs under one banner, the main concern moving forward was how well they could talk to the residents of North Devon. Previously, using different platforms for their telephony and contact centre needs, those staffing the call centre had the labor-intensive job of handling customer queries across two systems. Despite their hard work, the limitations of the systems meant that logging, reporting, and tracking calls and resolutions were tough. According to Sarah, these issues are all but forgotten now that they use Zoom,

“Obviously the price is amazing, but aside from that, it was that single platform and the customer journey reporting that really made the difference.”

Their new Zoom Contact Center incorporates seamlessly into their existing CRM system so all incoming calls are organised, prioritised, and logged instantly. Having everything operating on a single platform now means that every customer journey, regardless of where the call was taken, is reported on.

A highlight of the new solution is the call-back functionality, where customers who can’t reach an operator can request a call-back as soon as a slot opens up. Whereas they used to simply hold the line before many gave up entirely, now they can get back to their lives and still get through to the council. With call-back requests now integrated into the existing CRM system, when the call-back is dialed, the agent has the caller’s details automatically provided to them to help ensure that they meet the resident’s needs more efficiently.

“We’ve seen a 4% drop in our abandoned rate in the first month since going live which we attribute to the call-backs being introduced.”

Now customers can call the council and if someone’s available, they’re put straight through to wherever the operator is working from. The call is automatically logged against the individual resident’s data in CRM, along with any resolutions or follow-ups. If no one’s available, they can easily request a call-back and North Devon gets back to them quickly and easily. It’s all recorded, transparent, and seamless.

CX (Council Experience)

Many of Zoom’s other features have helped lead to greater customer experiences across the board when contacting their local council. Apart from getting glowing feedback from customers including how much simpler it is to get in touch and the call quality being notably better, the council brings greater reliability and consistency to the experience.

A great example of this is how, using Zoom’s text-to-speech function, all automated responses across the council are now consistent and clear. Previously, many current and former employees had recorded these leading to a mix of accents. It’s now the same engaging tone regardless of which service you call.

Moving forward with Zoom

So what’s next for North Devon Council and Zoom? Now their phone systems are operating smoothly, they’re moving to extend their face-to-face facilities for customers. There are plans in place to have a town centre hub where Zoom will feature center stage. Using Zoom, they’re adding to the flexibility of this scheme, meaning that if the council specialist isn’t present, the resident can still engage with them via a Zoom kiosk device to get the help and support they need. As Sarah puts it: “It gives us extra options, extra layers for us to deliver a service that our customers want.”

North Devon isn’t the biggest council in the country, but they’re set apart by their forward-thinking concern for their residents. They’re already being approached by other councils for advice on how they’ve improved communication with customers through Zoom. Andy’s own testimony sums it up perfectly: “With the Contact Center element, we’re one of the first authorities to use it, and if every other authority received what we received, I would have no hesitation in recommending Zoom. I’m not saying it for the sake of it, this is our actual experience. Zoom’s a really powerful platform and I would suggest that everyone lean into it.”