Our ability to interact and engage with our government is clearly fundamental to the functioning of our cities, states and nation. And, while it can be frustrating at times from a convenience standpoint, government agencies shoulder a significant burden in ensuring the privacy and security of its citizens, leading to possible longer handle times. Contact centers must adhere to strict compliance standards, like FedRAMP that have largely precluded the government from easily taking advantage of newer tech that redefines our experience with contact centers.
Many agencies have made considerable efforts to designing FedRAMP compliant systems. This typically results in the deployment of a hybrid environment where some application stacks reside on physical infrastructure while others move to a cloud environment. The downside to these designs are three-fold.
- First, hybrid and custom contact centers still require extensive capital investment, which can put a significant drag on deployment time as agencies identify budget (which is often limited) to procure and build out these new systems or institute existing system improvements
- Second, as the contact center expands, it becomes unruly and complex very quickly, leading to additional capital investment and results in support silos
- Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, government contact center agents (a precious and limited resource) become frustrated and disengaged
Let’s look at a real-life example of a contact center that has grown overly complex resulting in a negative impact to citizen experience. In a recent article, the Department of Housing and Urban Development discussed its efforts to drive improvements and make the agency more accountable to the citizens it represents.
The Centralized Contact Center
The phrase itself might be easily overlooked but it’s an important one. A centralized contact center allows agents to seamlessly engage with constituents across channels and for each of those channels to share information so that the agent is always in the know. Most importantly, it allows the user to define how they want to interact with the agency (think social, SMS, web, chat, etc.) The best way of creating this centralized environment is through cloud-based contact center technology. Adding and supporting new channels that citizens are using increasingly suddenly becomes achievable, implementing AI-driven optimization becomes realistic. Contact centers using cloud solutions allow you to activate the features that drive meaningful improvements, lower capital investment and redefine the government engagement experience. Today, NICE is the only FedRAMP compliant cloud contact center certified in the market today. Learn more about how NICE is supporting Federal State and Local governments and read our whitepaper on activating new channels for your agency and the sweeping improvements it can make to all facets of your contact center.
