The Colorado Department of Transportation’s (CDOT) Traffic Operations Centers (TOC) are the hidden nervous system of Colorado’s highway system. Tucked inside the Hidden Lake Tunnel and offices in Golden and Pueblo are call centers that manage safety and maintenance needs for the state’s highways. At the heart of this operation is the call center, which receives calls from Coloradans, first responders and drivers across the country about road conditions, closures and weather events.
An Outdated System with Limited Transparency
The TOC was managing its call center with a simple, traditional telecom setup. With basic landline telephones, the team could not provide advanced call-handling services such as queues, law enforcement and local government call prioritization, or recorded responses to common questions. The system even lacked basic labor and time-saving features like speed dial, costing the team precious minutes when information needed to be relayed quickly between the different operations centers.
Further, the system lacked transparency into key metrics such as call volume trends and duration. The CDOT team could not easily scale its agent bandwidth to handle anticipated needs in a mindful way. It simply had to handle calls with the agents on staff at any given moment.
A Holistic Approach to Change Management
The need for a new system was clear, but the call center team had been using the old system for so long that any process changes would need to include the insights and full buy-in of workers who would switch to the new platform.
While the logistics of implementing a new cloud-based call center were coordinated by the technology team, OIT’s project manager and solutions architect took extra time to incorporate user testing, workshops, demonstrations, modeling and office hours into the project plan.
“They have such critical operations and critical functionality to the state,” said Kylie, senior project manager for the implementation. “They were like, ‘If this [implementation] goes bad, what happens?’ And we had to prove that it wouldn’t go bad. We took the time to model how the system works and ensure they were comfortable. We took a moment to coach them through it.”
In addition to ensuring that users were comfortable with and aware of the new system's capabilities, the project manager was also gathering user information and feedback to ensure the end product would provide the best possible experience for CDOT’s TOC team. Through these conversations, the TOC team realized they needed additional call data reporting capabilities. Ultimately, the new product included this added functionality, customized to the team’s unique needs.
A Smooth Implementation Day and a Bright Future
Thanks to the comprehensive change management efforts of the OIT project manager and solutions architect, and to the open dialogue between OIT and the TOC staff throughout the project, implementation of the softphone system went smoothly.
“Being that we work in public safety and take calls related to emergencies on our state highways, we needed the implementation day to be quick and as seamless as possible,” said Amanda Alvarado, a TOC operations manager for the Pueblo facility. “The process was so smooth that nobody even noticed the transition.”
Now that TOC is using the softphone solution, they can record and analyze metrics on call volume, customer hold time, and more, enabling data-driven decisions on staffing and infrastructure. The TOC also has access to the full breadth of modern cloud-based call center functionality, including speed dial, queuing, and the ability to handle calls off-site from any computer.
With this first softphone implementation in the rearview mirror, the road ahead looks clear for CDOT’s TOC call center