Contact Centre (2024)

Response

Please note that the House of Commons and the House of Lords, both of which occupy the parliamentary estate, are two separate public authorities for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). Information regarding the Enquiries Service is held solely by the House of Commons, while information on the Parliamentary Digital Service Help Desk is held on a shared, bicameral basis. Please note additionally that the House of Lords has a separate Enquiry Service, and for any information relating to them you may wish to contact the House of Lords directly at foilords@parliament.uk.

1) Do you have a customer/ citizen facing contact centre?

This information is held by the House of Commons.
As explained in our clarification to you, the House of Commons has a number of teams within the House who are customer or citizen-facing in nature. You specified in your clarification to us that you wished to be provided information specifically for the House of Commons Enquiries Service and the Parliamentary Digital Service (PDS) Help Desk, and we have therefore considered what we hold regarding the remainder of your questions.

2) Name of IT Directorate who manages the Contact Centre Workstream or Contact Centre Manager ?

Some information is held by the House of Commons. The PDS Help Desk is managed by the Digital Customer Services IT directorate.

The Enquiries Services is not managed by a specific IT directorate within the House, however it may help you to know that it forms part of the House’s Chamber and Participation Team.

3) Do you employ and manage your own agents, or do you outsource to a third party? If you outsource who to?
4) How many contact centre agents do you have?
and
5) Do agents work from home? Or just your offices?

This information is held by the House of Commons.

Enquiries Service and PDS Help Desk staff are both directly employed and managed by the House. They work under a hybrid-working scheme, working both from home and in our offices. The number of employees in these teams at the time of your request are:
• Seven in the Enquiries Service
• 45 in the Help Desk team

6) Please confirm the manufacturer of your contact centre system(s) that are currently in place?
and
7) When is your contract renewal date?

This information is held by the House of Commons.

The Enquiries Services currently uses systems from Illumin and Netcall, the contract renewal dates for which are March 2024 and August 2024 respectively.

The PDS Help Desk uses system from ServiceNow and Netcall Liberty, the contract renewal dates for which are March 2024 and August 2024 respectively.

8) Who maintains your contact centre system(s) and Vendor solution currently deployed ?

This information is held by the House of Commons. Systems used by the Enquiries Service are maintained by the PDS, while systems used by the PDS Help Desk are maintained internally with supplier support from our respective suppliers.

9) Do you use a CRM in the contact centre? What platform is used?
and
10) Do you use the same CRM for the rest of the organisation? What platform is used?

This information is not held by the House of Commons. Neither the Enquiries Service nor the PDS Help Desk use a CRM system.

11) Do you use a knowledge base / knowledge management platform? What platform is used?

This information is held by the House of Commons. The Enquiries Service uses Microsoft Outlook as a knowledge management platform while the PDS Help Desk uses ServiceNow.

12) [Do these teams] have a customer or citizen facing chatbot? If so, who provides this chatbot technology?

This information is held by the House of Commons. Neither the Enquiries Service nor PDS Help Desk uses a customer/citizen-facing chatbot.

13) [Do these teams] utilise RPA technology? If so which RPA technology provider do you use?

This information is held by the House of Commons. The PDS Help Desk team uses RPA technology, specifically Microsoft Power Automate, while the Enquiries Service does not.