The project issues
Cornwall County Council won a bid to form a new unitary authority from the old “two-tier” arrangement. The new Council will be launched in April 2009. Currently the six Districts and one County Council have a range of telephone numbers with different geographic codes that customers use to access services. The Council’s Customer First programme wanted to develop a Telephone Number strategy that would provide a unified face to customers and would also rationalise the quantity of numbers used to access Council services. Socitm Consulting was asked to assist in the development of a customer access telephone number strategy based on best practice.

The Socitm Consulting solution
We began by reviewing the Council’s current customer access telephone number strategy and developing best practice inbound numbering options.

The options were then presented to a stakeholders’ workshop for analysis and option ranking using multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) techniques. After ranking the options against agreed criteria there was unanimous agreement on the preferred option.

Finally, we produced a final report highlighting the findings of the workshop, providing more detail on each option and additional information on SMS services.

The benefits to the client
With our extensive knowledge of the telecommunications marketplace, we were able to efficiently and effectively inform the Council of best practice in the area of inbound numbering and provide detailed cost comparisons. Our recommendations should enable the new unified authority to further develop its telecoms strategy and deliver efficiencies through improved inbound call routing.

Project identification /summary
Client organisation: Cornwall County Council
Client contact: Paul Bartell, OneCornwall Customer First Project Lead, 01872 322569,  pbartell@cornwall.gov.uk 
Lead consultant: keith.harman@socitm.gov.uk
Project no: 6517