Barcelona City Council improves its citizen-centric services

  • Barcelona City Council deploys Genesys technology to integrate services across multiple communication channels including web, email, SMS and voice
  • Barcelona City Council increases its 2010 citizen request handling target by 10 per cent


CAMBERLEY, UK – 19th March 2010 — Barcelona City Council, Spain’s second largest metropolitan local authority, selected Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, an Alcatel-Lucent company (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) and Telefonica Spain, the country’s largest telecommunications company, to develop and implement an advanced SIP-enabled, multi-channel contact centre to better respond to the needs of its citizens.

Genesys’ SIP server will, for the first time, integrate and consolidate the operations of  the Catalan Local Authority's internal and external contact centres in order to provide a complete view of customer interactions. This platform completes the service catalogue offered by the City Hall to its citizens throughout the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona and enables them to contact the local authority by telephone, email, website, and even SMS, to make inquiries about housing, social services, local tax and benefit services.

With this project, Barcelona City Hall will gain a better understanding of its outsourced operations, provide increased visibility of their performance, and improve customer service to its citizens through a wider set of communication channels that include email, voice and web self-service. After a thorough study of the marketplace, Barcelona City Hall chose the Genesys SIP server as it provides the functionality, operational control and openness to enable the Catalan Local Authority to extend its customer service beyond the contact centre, and to leverage, in the future, customer data and knowledge from across the entire enterprise to better align service goals. Barcelona City Hall anticipates the new contact centre will manage three million citizen contacts in 2010, a 10 per cent increase over the number of contacts managed in 2009.

"Demand from citizens was increasing and we knew if we were to provide the enhanced services they were asking for we’d need to improve our communications infrastructure," said Emili Rubio Lorenzo, Director Citizens Services at Barcelona City Hall. "We wanted to create an open, transparent communication line, moving our customers to the correct expert to solve their problem or answer their question. We knew this would involve making use of the different communication channels our customers use, including web, SMS and email, in addition to the telephone. The Genesys SIP server impressed us with its ability to support multiple media and conversations across multiple channels.  As a result we look forward to increasing the number of citizen inquiries we manage each year as we work towards delivering the best service to our citizens."

The Genesys SIP server will make it easier for Barcelona City Council to deliver services to its citizens as it:

  1. creates a single virtual pool of resources in the contact centre back offices, and remote locations to simplify administration and the addition of staff during peak times
  2. extends customer support across the full spectrum of government services so citizens can have access to qualified and available resources
  3. will enable the use of customer service applications such as presence, IM and video to provide higher levels of citizen-centric services

Telefonica Spain, Genesys’ "Partner of the Year" in Spain in 2007 and 2008 was instrumental in implementing the SIP server to enable this major service transformation for the citizens of Barcelona.

"Telefonica Spain really understands this market and the company's technical experience was essential in the design and implementation of the service infrastructure we deployed for Barcelona City Hall. This service infrastructure will consistently deliver successful, efficient and quick contact resolution for the City Hall's citizens, regardless of the communications channel used to access the services," added Agostino Bertoldi, Vice President of Southern Europe at Genesys. "Genesys’ track record of working with partners to successfully transform customer service organisations into unified service centres has allowed us to work with some of Europe’s most forward-thinking companies and we look forward to a strong and lasting partnership with Barcelona City Hall."

About Barcelona City Council
Barcelona City Council offers its citizens a multitude of services to ensure better everyday life for its inhabitants and a better city for them. These wide-ranging services that include finding solutions to the problems of the elderly, guaranteeing the rights of all people, and committing to the cohesion of the city, are provided from the local districts and neighbourhoods of Barcelona City Hall. For more information go to www.bcn.es

About Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc.
Genesys, an Alcatel-Lucent company, is the only company that focuses 100 per cent on software to manage customer interactions over the phone, Web and in e-mail. The Genesys software suite dynamically connects customers with the right resources – self-service or assisted-service – to fulfill customer requests, optimise customer care goals and efficiently use resources. Genesys software directs more than 100 million customer interactions every day for 4,000 companies and government agencies in 80 countries. These companies and agencies can leverage their entire organisation, from the contact centre to the back office, to improve the overall customer experience. As a result, Genesys helps stop customer frustration, drive efficiency and accelerate business innovation. For more information, go to www.genesyslab.com

About Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) is the trusted partner of service providers, enterprises and governments worldwide, providing solutions to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users. A leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent leverages the unrivalled technical and scientific expertise of Bell Labs, one of the largest innovation powerhouses in the communications industry. With operations in more than 130 countries and the most experienced global services organization in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with a global reach. Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 16.98 billion in 2008 and is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris. For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

Media Contact:
Duncan Burford,
UK PR for Genesys,
01780 721 433,
dburford@iba-europe.com

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