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Mid Sussex District Council - Government - UK

GOVERNMENT BODY VOTES APPROVAL FOR ENGAGE

The Mid Sussex Council’s ever-present specters of litigation and security issues, council taxes, and other telephone transactions have been put to rest thanks to implementation of TelStrat’s Engage Record. The regional government body, located in Heyward’s Heath, West Sussex, England, installed the new system with the help of its telecommunications supplier, Datapulse, and British Telecom (BT).

The system allows the Council to record and store selected telephone conversations into and out of the building. This means that all potential queries can be swiftly dealt with and transcripts of all conversations are readily available should the Council be challenged with litigation cases.

Mid Sussex’s Telecommunications Manager, David Baker, said, “Since the Council had responsibility for dealing with debt collection, council tax issues and other transaction services, it became obvious that in the present climate, we needed to find a way to monitor calls effectively. We researched the market to find a software package that would do this and at the same time be compatible with our existing systems at the Council’s offices in Hayward’s Heath. BT suggested that we talk to Datapulse, a specialist in this area. The TelStrat product Datapulse suggested fit our needs perfectly. The rest of the advice and support we have received has been quite professional throughout the installation process.”

The Council was very specific about its requirements, stating that the chosen system would need to be fully integrated with its existing Meridian system, while at the same time prove easy to use. Ioan MacRae, Channel Director at Datapulse, said, “The Engage solution meets the Council’s needs exactly, having been specifically designed to work with Meridian systems.”

The Mid Sussex Council has now been using the system for several months and is delighted with the results, even though the Council has only tapped into a small portion of this powerful system’s capabilities. Mr. MacRae said, “Engage Record has four levels of capability. It offers a global recording option, which records all incoming and outgoing calls; a record on demand option, which enables the user to record a specific conversation in total, regardless of when during the conversation the decision is made to record; selective recording; and quality monitoring.

Currently, the Mid Sussex Council uses the global recording option, while making the record on demand option available to certain senior managers. They can choose any or all of the other options at any time, should the need arise.”

The Council’s IT team manages the system internally through software on their desktops after only a halfday training session. “Because the system is so straightforward, that’s all that’s needed for a user to become proficient at using the system,” said Mr. MacRae.

Both BT and Datapulse support Engage, if required. However, says Chris Bulley, Mid Sussex’s System Support Officer, “While it’s reassuring to know that they are there, we’ve not needed to call on them at all. I hardly dare say it, but we’ve had no teething problems whatsoever.”

The Council plans to store recorded calls for six months. But, because it is easy to burn the calls to DVD, the option is there to archive them for much longer if the need arises. “We’re delighted,” says Mr. Bulley. “We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend both the Engage Suite and Datapulse to anyone!”

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