Call Center Services Featured Article

NACR's 24x7 One Call Solution Center Helps Houston Municipal Courts Better Serve Citizens

By Madhubanti Rudra
TMCnet Contributor

NACR is a nationally recognized player in the field of enterprise communication solutions. NACR is a certified Avaya (News - Alert) Platinum Channel Partner and seven-time Avaya BusinessPartner of the Year.  When it came to partnering with a communication company to provide the citizens better services through improved efficiency, NACR came as the obvious choice for the City of Houston’s Municipal Courts Administration Department.

The partnership led to the enhancement of the city's One Call Solution Center, which provides callers with 24-hour access to court information via Interactive Voice Response (IVR).

“NACR has a great ongoing partnership with Houston, having previously worked with the city to integrate a leading-edge Avaya contact center solution. When the Municipal Courts expressed a need to increase service and accessibility to citizens, as well as improve the ability to collect fines, we were excited for the opportunity to help make it happen,” explained David Garlich, Southern Regional Vice President of NACR.

Houston's One Call Solution Center with IVR from NACR is the nation’s second and Texas Municipal court’s first 24x7 call center. The call center allows callers to access vital information in English and Spanish, providing self-service for basic requests such as hours of operation and court locations; details about court services and procedures; fine payments and options; and information regarding tickets and citations.

Callers can access the IVR system via Houston's 3-1-1 helpline. This solution also provides better routing of calls to live agents, who are available 8 am-8 pm Monday through Friday to provide personal assistance and handle outbound calling duties such as arraignment and fine delinquency reminders.

Other benefits includes computer-telephony integration (CTI (News - Alert)), which  provides the agents with screen pop-ups of caller information so they can handle calls more effectively; call recording and monitoring capabilities are also part of the system augmentation.

A dedicated NACR Project Manager was stationed on the site to make sure that the solution can support proper integration between the courts database and a separate IVR used to process credit card payments, allowing for correct and prompt updating of the database when fines are paid.

“Consistent with most major service providers in the private sector, we see this initiative as a continuation of simplifying our services to be more convenient and accessible for our customers. Offering options for self-sufficiency translates into greater usage and customer value,” said Sahira J. Abdool, director & chief clerk of the Municipal Courts Administration Department.