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Commited to serving the community
Sussex Police is committed to serving its community, hence effective and secure communication is a top priority for the force. This case study explores how the force has achieved this with its call centre solution...
With 80 miles of fabulous coastline and two-thirds of the county designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Sussex is one of the most beautiful places in the British Isles. Breathtaking views ranging across the South Downs countryside, combined with the energetic, cosmopolitan city of Brighton, mean there’s no shortage of things to see and do. Often the envy of other constabularies, Sussex Police serve areas from Crawley to Brighton and Chichester to Hastings.
Sussex Police is committed to serving its community, hence effective and secure communication is a top priority for the force. Its 36-seat call centre at the Lewes headquarters allows residents to report crime incidents and request additional information, 24 hours a day throughout the year.
Dave Shoult, IT support officer, Sussex Police explains, “The call centre in Lewes ensures that Sussex residents have a point of contact, at any time, to report a crime or ask advice of trained police personnel. By channelling non-emergency calls such as crime reporting and information requests into a call centre, we have ensured that efficiencies are maximised and police resources remain focused.”
The infrastructure
The Nortel Networks Meridian platform has been the core infrastructure for communication and the force attributes a lot of the success of their call centre to their Nortel Symposium solution. Supported by British Telecom (BT), it has performed faultlessly for the last two years.
A long-time Stratus Continuum customer, the police force understands the role fault-tolerant technology plays in delivering 24/7 continuous availability. When they learned of the Stratus ftServer system’s support for Nortel’s Symposium application, they were keen to evaluate possibilities of upgrading to ftServer hardware.
“We were very familiar with the Stratus Continuum product, but not their new ftServer range. When BT demonstrated the fault-tolerant capabilities of the ftServer system, I was very impressed. The elimination of single points of failure was apparent when over half of the hardware was removed and the system continued to run,” says Shoult.
The ftServer line is a fault-tolerant, industry-standard family of servers that provides maximum uptime for Microsoft Windows environments. These Intel processor-based systems avert unplanned downtime by using built-in Stratus Continuous Processing features. And with uptime protection designed in, affordable ftServer systems meet or exceed the computer industry’s highest level of availability — 99.999% in real-world customer installations.
Every ftServer system uses replicated components, CPUs, memory, I/O adapters, and more, that operate in lockstep. The duplicate components perform exactly the same task, in the same way, at the same time. In the case of a malfunction, the partner component acts as an active spare and continues normal operation. Lockstep hardware is complemented by the ftServer family’s failsafe system software, which prevents many software errors (such as problems with device drivers) from escalating into outages.
Troubleshooting
Continuous self-monitoring and remote troubleshooting are enabled by ActiveService functionality engineered into the server. If the server detects a potential issue, processing continues uninterrupted while the condition is isolated. The server then automatically dials out to the Stratus Customer Assistance Centre (CAC) to relay information about what action to take.
The server’s lockstep hardware, failsafe software, and ActiveService capabilities are transparent to standard Windows-based software. As a result, off-the-shelf applications instantly take advantage of Stratus fault tolerance without the special configuration and software modification needed to use the high-availability features of a cluster.
Intelligent call-handling
Application is only as good as the hardware it runs on. In addition to the installation of the Stratus ftServer system, Nortel Symposium software was upgraded to release 4.2.
The new version of Symposium software comes with enhancing skill-based routing and advanced, intelligent call-handling capabilities. This enables agents to have customer records immediately because the caller line identity (CLI) is recognised. Furthermore, advanced reporting ensures that call records can be analysed in order to improve the overall efficiency of the call centre.
Expansion plans
The successful implementation of the new Symposium solution on the ftServer system has the Sussex Police considering an extension of the call centre to handle direct crime reports. Confidence in the availability and scalability of the solution has been the key driver behind their expansion plans.
The Stratus ftServer platform with Nortel Symposium delivers bulletproof call centre solutions for mission-critical environments. “The new server is an excellent piece of kit. Combined with the Symposium product, it has improved the efficiency of the call centre by ensuring calls are intelligently routed to the right officers, while also giving us the performance guarantees we require,” adds Shoult.
Concluding, Shoult says, “When BT demonstrated the fault-tolerant capabilities of the ftServer system, I was very impressed. The elimination of single points of failure was apparent when over half of the hardware was removed and the system continued to run.”
