For those of you who are avid readers of contact center solutions community content, you are aware of the fact that when it comes to industry recognition, Benchmark Portal is a recognized independent evaluator of contact center performance. Hence, when it hands out awards, as it did recently, for which contact centers it believes are doing a great job, it is something to note.
Typically honors go to enterprises, but government agencies represent a major contact center market sector and the city of Fort Wayne, Ind.’s 311 contact center was honored as one of BenchmarkPortal’s top 50 small contact centers in the United States and Canada in 2014.
What is notable about the achievement is that this marks the third consecutive year that Fort Wayne’s contact center has ranked in BenchmarkPortal’s Top 100 Small Call Center category, which includes private and municipal centers staffed by less than 100 employees.
The city launched its 311 program in 2007 to make government more accessible. Since then, services provided by 311 have continued to expand; the department currently assists 22 city departments. In 2013, the call center handled more than 170,000 calls.
As noted, BenchmarkPortal is an international organization recognized as a leader in contact center expertise, certification and training, research and tracking of the industry’s best practices. Benchmark ranked call centers based on surveys distributed to its database of more than 1,000 public and private call centers in North America.
Given all of the headlines recently about issues with governments of all sizes to handle customer interactions properly and provide enhanced customer experiences it is nice to see Fort Wayne’s name on the list.