The City runs an online portal and an app to log requests, but the primary communications route is the 311 Call & Resolution Center. The call center takes up to 600 calls a day from Buffalo residents. Real people speaking to real people about everyday issues. “311 is the lifeblood of the City,” says Oswaldo Mestre, Chief Service Officer, Division of Citizen Services, City of Buffalo. “It shows citizens that there is always a way to reach out to City Hall.”
With the stay at home order issue by Mayor Brown in mid-March, the City of Buffalo needed an answer to a critically important question. How would the city ensure that its citizens could call their government during an uncertain time when people needed information the most?
All offices were to close. It would be impossible to operate the 311 Call & Resolution Center. “Mayor Byron Brown led the way for the City’s call center to transition quickly to operate remotely,” Mestre says. The government knew that limiting or shutting down access to the call center was not an option. Citizen Services needed its call center agents to be able to work from home, to take calls from concerned residents, and to have secure access to city information and the latest guidance. And it needed this set up over the weekend. But they did not have an infrastructure in place for the call center to work remotely.
The City of Good Neighbors
Cue the University at Buffalo, which had already securely scaled Cisco infrastructure for more than four thousand of its own employees to work remotely. With the forward-looking investment in technology, the university had the capacity and capability in place to help the city.Buffalo proudly shares its mantra as, “The City of Good Neighbors.” It’s times like these that good neighbors are needed most; so, when the City needed help, they knew they could also call on their neighbor and long-time partner, Cisco, to provide a solution to their problem.
At the time, many customers just like the City of Buffalo were reaching out to Cisco for help staying connected to their customers during the pandemic. Piecing all the elements together, Cisco responded by creating the Webex Contact Center Quick Deploy Solution. This solution would provide organizations the ability to deploy a cloud contact center quickly, cost-effectively, and allow companies to deliver information to their customers in a time when communication channels are paramount.
In just two days, a remote 311 center was up and running, ready to respond to residents’ needs. With Webex Contact Center, Cisco’s feature-rich, native cloud contact center solution, the City would have the ability for agents to work from the comfort of their own homes, have calls routed to them as if they were in the office, and there would be no need for a VPN connection or clunky on-premises infrastructure to enable service.
Keeping Critical Lines of Communication Open
During the pandemic, Buffalo’s 311 service has received as many as two thousand calls a day.Monday morning at 8.30 a.m., the first calls come into the 311 Call & Resolution Center. “We never missed a beat,” says Mestre. The dozen 311 call center agents were able to work from home, with everything they needed to work effectively in hand. Mestre praises Cisco’s technology and the attitude of the 311 teams.
This critical continuity of government enabled the city to meet its mission and provide access to services and important information with the highest possible level of care for the citizens of Buffalo.
“Every time someone calls, it’s an opportunity for us to bind that social contract with residents in the community. If we’re not taking those calls, who will?” - Oswaldo Mestre, chief service officer and citizen services director for Buffalo
In the end, this partnership and the willingness to lend a helping hand is the kind of inspiring display of leadership and innovation that we all need right now.
“We can’t forget the human element and how this affects people in the community,” Mestre expresses. “The 311 Call Center is critical to smooth communications in the City. It is absolutely essential during times of uncertainty. Even with offices closed and staff working from home, Cisco solutions meant we never missed a call.”
