GOVERNMENT SUCCESS STORY ShoreTel Leaps Mountains To Improve Colorado City’s Communications CHALLENGE: • Replace aging phone system • Consolidate communications between city hall, multiple facilities, and field personnel • Improve the success rate for citizens reaching the right staff member • Implement the new phone system quickly, on a reliable, cost-effective and easy to manage system SOLUTION: • Combine the phone and computer network using the ShoreTel UC system • Place a single ShorePhone telephone on 1000+ city desks and counters to serve all of the City’s needs BENEFITS: • Improved Service delivery to constituents using fully integrated communications across all city departments, ensuring calls can quickly be forwarded to the right person • Improved Reliability 24x7x365 while reducing support costs and freeing-up internal staff time. • Management Simplicity for providing new feature-rich capabilities, customizable work groups and integration with cell phones used by hundreds of mobile workers. • Lower Total Cost of Ownership for acquiring and maintaining the system on an annual basis going forward. Local governments face constant challenges in fulfilling their constituents’ requirements. The City of Lakewood, Colorado, a thriving Denver suburb, deals with thousands of phone calls daily and every call needs a response. Recreation centers must effectively process class registrations during peak enrollment times. Public Works must respond fast to utility locator requests coming in by fax and thousands of calls may occur during a snowstorm. The Police Department handles hundreds of non-emergency calls daily, and inspectors and code enforcement officers are part of the critical chain of communications, but they are working in the field, away from their desks. ShoreTel has helped the City of Lakewood deal with these types of communications demands. Taking full advantage of the latest digital technologies to boost internal efficiencies and optimize constituent communications is a top priority for Lakewood CIO, Boris Naschansky. The city has been recognized as one of the Top Ten Digital Cities in the United States for the past three years by the Center for Digital Government, an honor that recognizes cities that excel in the use of digital technologies to efficiently operate government, and communicate with citizens. The City’s 22-year-old phone system became increasingly costly and time- consuming to maintain. It offered limited or basic features for the 1,200 full-time and part-time employees located at over two dozen offices across the city. “We want to ensure that every call into the City’s offices reaches the right person as quickly as possible,” Mr Naschansky explained. “But on the old system incoming calls rang three times at one desk, three times at the next, and so on, finally ringing in the director’s office, by which time if the party was still on the line, they were frustrated. Getting stuck in the cycle of returning calls and leaving voicemails back and forth was just not productive.” The City of Lakewood is Colorado’s fourth largest city of nearly 150,000 residents located between Denver and the front range of the Rocky Mountains. Covering an area of more than 44 square miles, the city provides a full range of municipal services that include police, public works, water utilities, recreational activities, cultural events, and family assistance programs.
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GOVERNMENT SUCCESS STORY
ShoreTel Leaps Mountains To Improve Colorado City’s Communications CHALLENGE:
Call Handling Saves Time and Boosts ProductivityMorethan30operatingdivisionsthroughoutthecityareusinghuntgroupstocontroltheflowofcallsatdifferenttimesoftheday.InthePublicWorksandPlanningdepartments,callscanbeansweredbyemployeesinofficeswhenstaffatthepermitcounterishandlinginquiriesinperson.Onarecentsnowday,cityworkerswereabletoadvisecallersthattheofficeswereclosingat2p.m.byrapidlycustomizingtheworkandhuntgroupsettings.
Management Simplicity Saves Time and MoneyEaseofusealsoextendstomanagementsimplicity.AftertrainingtheteamontheShoreTelsysteminabouttwohours,anyhelpdeskagentcansupportinternalqueries.“ShoreTel’ssimpleWeb-basedsystemmanagementconsolehasmadelifesignificantlyeasier,andwe’remuchmoreproductivecomparedtotheoldsystem,”MrCullingfordsaid.“NowwecanuseaPCfromanydeskatthecitytomakechangesinamatterofminutes.Wenolongerhavetocalloutcontractors,orneedtoinvestinspecializedphonesystemcertificationtraining.”
ShoreTel is a provider of business communication solutions whose brilliantly simple unified communications platforms, applications and mobile UC solutions promise a new rhythm of workforce engagement and collaboration. With costly complexity eliminated by design from its award winning, all-in-one IP phone system, UC and contact center solution, and its industry leading hosted business phone system, workers enjoy a freedom and self-reliance that other providers can’t match. Users have full control to engage and collaborate, no matter the time, place or device, for the lowest cost and demand on IT resources in the industry. ShoreTel is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and has regional offices and partners worldwide. For more information, visit shoretel.com or shoretelsky.com
