Cloud recording minimises call disputes

Hinchinbrook Shire Council (HSC) in Queensland's North East is home to many constituents who are uncomfortable connecting online. As a result, the council is more likely to field enquiries via phone, according to Emma Prior, HSCs administration services team leader.

That preference for telephone communication meant that HSC needed a reliable way of recording and documenting customer service interactions, in order to avoid 'he said, she said' situations, especially when dealing with contentious issues.

Prior says the need was recognised when the council carried out collections on outstanding rates.

"Part of our process is to place reminder calls to home owners. But people would deny they were called or claimed they had missed the call and there wasn't a message.

"We now use Dubber Call Recording for our main customer service centre and our rates team, along with the regulatory compliance team, also have all have their phones recorded. Now we can say: hang on, we have this recording to show that we did speak to you or leave a message on a particular date.

"That was the driver for getting recordings in the first place, from there we have gone on to use it in other areas," Prior said.

The team deals with a variety of calls from across many areas of the community.

"Rates are the main ones, then there are roads, animals and cemetery enquiries. Hinchinbrook also handles food licensing. We get all sorts of things, we field things that aren't even council matters," Prior said.

According to HSC Information Services Manager Steven Veltmeyer, there are 20 Dubber Cloud Call recording devices at the council.

"Until now we have operated as separate divisions, but we are in the process of centralising all incoming calls to go through our main customer service centre. Now that we are rolling out Microsoft Teams, it will be easier to keep control of these calls," Veltmeyer said.

HSC was the first council in Queensland to roll out Microsoft Teams as its sole solution and the first in the state to use Dubber Cloud Call Recording on Teams.

Future goals

Veltmeyer said that now the call recording system is bedded in, the next step is to make use of Dubber's advanced AI features. He is interested in detecting predefined words and phrases for proactive capture, flagging and reporting, allowing the council to be informed about conversations without the need for manual listening. In the meantime, he said the council is learning how to get the best from the system.

"We've recently started capturing data on, say, when a supervisor needs to intervene during a call. We're learning quickly.

"We are seeing patterns of how our calling works, where people come and go. We couldn't do that with our previous clunky system. Before we were guessing on the number of people who needed recording, now we have a much better idea of what we need," he said.

Work at the council ebbs and flows. There are peaks twice a year when rates go out and another surge when it is time to renew food licences. The rainy season is often accompanied by another peak, as there can be a lot of weather-related emergency events.

Veltmeyer said moving to Microsoft Teams meant a huge cultural change for the council. He has seen schools do the same move almost overnight, enabling students to learn from home when the pandemic first hit. He believes it meant even more change for council employees.

"We had a massive shift in a short time to get to the point where we are now taking phones off desks. That meant a major mind shift away from hardware to being able to answer incoming Teams calls on mobile phones. Moving to Teams made working from home possible," he said.

From Prior's perspective, a goal is to have her team resolve 80% of enquiries at the first point of contact. That rate has improved in recent times, but at the moment the single call clear-up rate is about 60%. To help reach the goal, she uses Dubber for staff training.

"It's all well and good to learn the theory about handling a difficult call, but to hear it done in practice, whether someone handled a call really well or really badly helps you learn even more," Prior said.

Image credit: iStock.com/Chainarong Prasertthai