Benzinga | Mar 31, 2021 08:58AM EDT

Harrow Council Says Moves To The Cloud With 8x8 To Enhance Delivery Of Essential Harrow Services

More than One Third of London's Borough Councils Now Using 8x8 Integrated Cloud Contact Centre and Communications Services to Enhance Employee and Customer Engagement

8x8, Inc. (NYSE:EGHT), a leading integrated cloud communications platform provider, today announced that Harrow Council has deployed the 8x8 integrated cloud contact centre and communications product as part of its digital transformation agenda to enhance the delivery of essential services for its more than 240,000 residents.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210331005231/en/

Harrow Council Moves to the Cloud with 8x8 to Enhance Delivery of Essential Harrow Services (Graphic: Business Wire)

As one of London's 32 borough councils, Harrow Council embarked on an ambitious digital transformation plan to improve the services provided to residents, businesses and visitors. The Council faced challenges that were common among public sector organisations. It was hampered by legacy on-premises systems that were unreliable, costly to maintain, and offered limited functionality. These technology shortcomings were further exacerbated when the council's mission-critical "Access Harrow" contact centre and telephony system struggled to support employees and contact centre agents transitioning to remote work.

With their decision to replace their legacy systems, Harrow Council selected 8x8's integrated cloud contact centre and communications platform to improve manageability and reliability, ensure business resiliency, enable an operate-from-anywhere workforce, and lower costs. Working with 8x8, the Council quickly equipped their 160 "Access Harrow" operators--who handle everything from missed garbage collection to helping residents pay their council tax--with the ability to engage customers across voice and digital channels while having a 360-degree view of customer needs and interactions. 8x8's intuitive user experience and enhanced functionality helped make the deployment and adoption easy and seamless even as most employees were trained remotely. The result was a streamlined employee and customer experience with advanced analytics and reporting, allowing operators to consult and collaborate with colleagues to resolve customer issues through immediate access to relevant information.

Harrow Council deployment reflects the wider success 8x8 has experienced within the UK public sector in the last year:

* The number of UK public sector customers has nearly doubled year-over-year, ending December 31, 2020, with NHS Trusts deployments growing significantly over the same time frame.

* 8x8 is providing integrated cloud communications and contact centre services to more than a third of London's boroughs.

* 8x8 recently signed and deployed additional public sector customers, including: Liverpool City Council, a local government serving one of the largest metropolitan districts in the UK. Working with 8x8, Liverpool City Council is providing essential services for residents and businesses while enabling remote work from anywhere. Public Health Scotland, the specialist national health care services provider in Scotland which supports the 14 NHS health boards across its 5.5 million citizens, selected the 8x8 integrated cloud communications and contact centre product. Kent Community Health, a UK NHS provider of community services, selected 8x8 to accelerate their digital transformation and improve customer experience. Newham College of Further Education, a large general further education college in the London Borough of Newham, selected the 8x8 integrated cloud communications and contact centre product through the partnership with Virgin Media Business. Ben Goward, ICT Director at Harrow Council said: "As we made a smooth transition into the cloud, the 8x8 delivery team was with us every step of the way, ensuring we were ready to make the switch. The level of support they provided those initial weeks made what felt like a mammoth task more manageable. Working with 8x8 has enabled us to adopt a nimble, hybrid approach, allowing our staff to work from anywhere while providing residents, businesses and visitors with the essential services they require." "One of the public sector's main challenges is trying to transform organisational performance and services with limited resources and outdated technology," said Jamie Snaddon, Managing Director, EMEA at 8x8, Inc. "Providing Harrow Council with an integrated communications and contact centre solution has allowed them to rapidly transition to the cloud, under difficult circumstances, without impacting the essential services they deliver to the community. We look forward to working together as they roll out additional services in the coming months."