LAHORE: A Citizen Contact Centre (CCC), launched by the Punjab Information Technology Board’s (PITB), in November 2015, has responded to 2,393,832 (2.3 million) calls made by citizens from across the province. The information was shared in a progress review meeting chaired by Dr. Umar Saif, the chairman of the PITB, on Wednesday. The meeting noted that calls were received from citizens for information, complaints and feedback, around the clock in three shifts. A total 615,664 outbound calls made for citizen feedback in this period and 6,568,145 (6.5 million) robocalls were made during the period. A statement released afterwards said that 30 campaigns were being served by the CCC pertaining to federal and provincial departments, which included Punjab Health Line, Online College Admission, E stamping Helpline, Chief Minister E-Rozgar Training Program, Pakistan Hajj Helpline, Overseas Pakistani Commission, Excise & Taxation Punjab, Helpdesk – Smart Monitoring, BISE Helpline, Citizen Facilitation Centre, Awaz-e-Khalq, Labbaik Bhakkar helpline, PDMA Disaster Helpline, Zimmedar Shehri Helpline for CDGL, Smart Monitoring Feedback Calls, Punjab Agriculture Helpline, Livestock Department helpline, Citizen Feedback Monitoring Program, Chinese SOS Helpline, Biometric Attendance System, Lahore High Court, E – Learn Tablets Parent Feedback, Population Welfare Department, Prime Minister Youth Program Helpline, Punjab Khidmat Card Helpline, Punjab Metro Bus Helpline, Punjab School Hotline, Unique Identification of Student in Public School, WASA Helpline and Business Registration Unit Helpline. The CCC has a seating capacity of up to 75 agents per shift, while currently the call centre has a strength of 78 customer care agents who work in three shifts. The infrastructure can support up to 200 agents. “Average Calls Success Ratio/Service-level (SL) is 88 percent for a year. CCC is a centralised call centre platform for multiple government departments (autonomous/semi-government bodies/departments/units) to interact with citizen under the umbrella of PPMRP.” “The CCC has an inbuilt Network Monitoring System (NMS), Real Time Adherence (RTA) for agents, live wall board, silent call monitoring tool, call barging option, Net Promoter Score (NPS) and historical and live reporting portal. The CCC operations include inbound and outbound functions, which have the provision of services like information/inquires, complaints registration, survey calls and robo calls.” The statement further said, “operations of CCC are of continuous nature, the scope of the project is not limited to providing helpline services but also supporting federal departments. The CCC is enriched with value added services like complaint management systems, tracking systems and survey lines for different departments. It also includes provision of application/portal for sending out customised SMS messages, support robo calls to respective citizens for communication of different information, follow up and closing of inquiries/complaints.” The meeting was informed about future advancements of the CCC, which will include a Customer Service Index (CSI) to be formed with the help of citizen feedback, and a SMART IVR. These changes would be helpful in serving of respective citizens more speedily without any wait, the meeting noted. Published in Daily Times, April 19th 2018.