Consulate Offices

When an International Consulate is overwhelmed with requests from travellers seeking visas and foreign nations resident in Australia wanting to renew their passports – their phones rang to meltdown. Staff were exhausted and frustrated, and inbound callers were angry at extended call wait times. 

The Consulate adjusted the phone system stings to force callers to leave messages.

Now staff had to respond to hundreds of messages.

When Telstra and Captivate Connect met with the Consulate staff, they were at wit’s end on how to improve the situation.  After a study of call management and the qualifications required by the foreign government for staff handling Visa and Passport applications – we discovered that adding extra staff was not an option.

Most of the calls were handling queries and answering FAQs that were already on the website however the callers were not following the website instructions, they wanted to speak to someone to ‘jump the queue’.

The challenge was how to set up the phone system so it could answer the FAQs and provide a checklist of documents and instructions without the repetitive call handling by staff.

The solution required a smart TIPT Cisco UC phone system from Telstra combined with the Interactivity of Captivate Connect. Inbound calls are now directed by IVR to press one for a Visa application. The caller is placed into a virtual Call Queue and instructed that the checklist will be sent to the caller by SMS.

The Captivate Connect system sends the Visa Checklist to the caller’s Australian mobile number automatically and completes the call. All the same instructions are now delivered to the visa applicant automatically without the staff speaking to anyone.

The same function is now used for Passport renewals, medicine approvals and other documents in both English and the foreign language of the Consulate.

For more details on this solution, call Mark Horwood on +618 9368 7511 or email mark.horwood@captivateconnect.com