CASE STUDY SPOTLIGHT : Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council find innovative uses for Zen connections and discover a call centre experience with a difference

The Challenge

Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council (CNBC) needed to make changes to their Internet solution. Using a combination of Dial up and ISDN for home workers and Council sites was no longer effective in terms of speed and reliability.

This network also extended to over 40 Councillors based outside the offices who needed contact with their constituents and therefore e-mail access, on call officers who required online access at home to monitor cameras and check weather forecasts for road gritters, and several remote Council sites that currently had no access to the Council network.

The main Council offices also needed an increase in upload speed, as they connect to the firewall and manage all the VPN (Virtual Private Network) tunnels for the homeworkers.

As past experience of call centres had left the Council disappointed and frustrated, they were looking for a provider who could offer customer service and technical support with a difference.

The Solution

Zen installed multiple ADSL accounts for the Council centres and home workers, which have since been upgraded to the 8000 Max system further improving speeds. CNBC also have Zen SDSL connections in place with managed hardware in the main offices.

The Benefits

The SDSL enables faster upload speeds for key areas of the Council network, including the Firewall and VPN management.

CNBC can now run an effective home worker system, creating remote office environments as Zen provides static IP addresses as standard with all Broadband accounts, ensuring that VPN links can be made into the Council network with reliability, security and consistent speeds. The other remote sites, previously unable to connect to the Council network, now have static IP addresses and reliable connectivity to link in, allowing the Council’s leisure booking system to go online.

With improvements of reliability and speed the Council began to use Broadband in innovative ways, including ADSL for CCTV accounts on car parks. The excellent uncontended Zen network is a key factor here as the connection has consistent speed levels, is suitable for synching across long lines and therefore provides an efficient link for the remote access of CCTV images to the main control room.

Due to proven reliability, Zen Broadband has also been installed for use in the main Council Chamber for Web casting of Council and Public meetings, and the Council now use recording equipment to broadcast the meetings over the Internet. Another Zen account has been set up at a local Safer Communities Police Centre for the staff to connect back to the Council network.

With employees able to work from home efficiently, those returning from Maternity cover or away from the office due to family circumstances can also benefit, tying in with the Flexible Working hours the Council offers. A major advantage to this is the 5-7 working day lead time for new activations.

CNBC now experiences faster connections, and has cut the costs associated with the ISDN lines. With consistently reliable connections, the potential is now there to use new technologies such as VoIP (Voice over IP) so that employees could have internal phones at home going over the Zen Broadband and again save money.

The Council found that Zen was not only technically strong but also customer focused, making the whole experience different from a normal call centre. Zen could liaise with BT to handle the ISDN conversions to Broadband, creating minimal downtime and booking an engineer to carry out the work for the Council. CNBC also found the work of the Zen sales consultant, who would offer advice and place orders, an invaluable part of the service as this guaranteed that they made the most out of their Internet connectivity.

Martin Hodson ICT Support Technician , Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council, commented;

"Moving from dial-up and ISDN to ADSL is a large cost saving whilst also increasing the connection speeds for our end users. We have now expanded our Internet usage into new areas due to the reliability experienced. Being a Zen customer, we can see why they regularly win awards for reliability and customer service, the personal touch from all involved at Zen is a big factor in our continuing use of their services. Zen's technical support is second to none, with staff who are always professional and helpful."

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