Contact Centre Omni Channel Telephony

GSA requires a scalable, omni-channel contact centre telephony platform that supports inbound and outbound voice services, alongside email and SMS communication. It will also incorporate workforce management capabilities to enable effective forecasting, scheduling, and performance management of customer service agents.

The solution will provide a reliable and efficient contact handling environment, enabling customer service agents to manage interactions across multiple channels and teams, delivering end-to-end customer contact management.

The platform will be designed with scalability in mind, allowing for future expansion into a fully omni-channel solution. This will incorporate AI-driven capabilities, automation, and chatbot functionality to improve customer experience and operational efficiency. It will also support seamless movement of customers between digital and voice channels while retaining context and customer history, reducing the need for customers to repeat information.

Additional capabilities based on the following phased approach, will include implementations that will promote and support, channel shift, social media integration, out-of-hours functionality, self-service via a customer portal, WhatsApp integration, and connectivity to GSA core platforms as required.

Business Objectives

The key objectives of this initiative are:

Phase 1

• Improve customer experience through faster response times and consistent communication across channels
• Increase operational efficiency by streamlining agent workflows and automating routine tasks
• Enable multi-channel engagement (voice, email, SMS) from a single platform
• Provide scalability to support growing customer demand and flexibility as customer contact channels evolve. A modern contact centre should allow interactions to flow between digital and voice channels while retaining context and customer history, reducing the need for customers to repeat information
• Implement robust reporting and workforce management capabilities

Phase 2

Lay the foundation for omnichannel and AI capabilities, including:

• Intelligent routing
• Chatbots and virtual assistants
• Predictive analytics
• Capabilities such as call summaries, agent assist, intent recognition, and sentiment analysis
• Introduce additional digital channels and services, including:

o Customer self-service portal

o Social media channels

o Channel switching (movement between channels)

o Digital concierge (triage)

In Scope / Out of Scope

In Scope:

• Telephony (Voice)

o Inbound call handling

o Outbound calling capabilities (manual and automated)

o Call routing and queuing

o IVR (Interactive Voice Response)

o Workforce management

• Digital Communication

o Email management (inbound/outbound)

o SMS/text messaging (inbound/outbound)

• Agent Functionality

o Unified agent desktop/interface

o Call controls (hold, transfer, mute, conference)

o Interaction history

• Reporting & Analytics

o Operational reporting (call volumes, wait times, agent performance, workforce management)

• Scalability

o A cloud-based or scalable architecture should be implemented to support future growth, ensuring the solution remains evergreen and adaptable to evolving business needs.

Out of Scope (For initial phase 1)

• Full omnichannel integration (e.g. social media, web chat)
• Advanced AI-driven automation (to be considered in future phases)
• Complex MRI integration
• Advanced speech analytics (beyond reporting)

This is required to modernise the service, support hybrid working, improve customer engagement, and reduce estate and operating costs. Estimated budget of £650k inc VAT.