Every day, residents of the London Boroughs of Brent, Lewisham, and Southwark reach out to their councils for help with everyday needs—council tax questions, housing support, bin collections, and more. And every day, the agents who answer those calls rely on a small but mighty shared services team that keeps everything running.
Gavin Moore is one of them. As Senior Technical Support Officer at the London Borough of Brent, Gavin leads the telephony administration for a shared team of 80–100 employees who support contact center operations across all three boroughs. It’s a complex environment, with each council offering slightly different services but they all rely on high-volume voice calls to meet residents where they are.
One team, six platforms, and mounting frustration
Previously, the boroughs were each using their own contact center and internal communications systems—a total of six different providers. It made daily operations harder than they needed to be. “The old systems were unreliable and failing on practically a weekly basis,” said Gavin.
With 100 agents live per day per borough and up to 160,000 calls per month coming in from the public, the shared services team needed to streamline fast. They weren’t just looking for better software—they were looking for one platform that could simplify operations across three councils, improve reliability, and deliver value for money.
The team chose to replace all six providers with a single solution: 8x8. “That was a gamechanger, to have just one provider,” said Gavin. “From an administrator perspective, it’s a dream.” The migration was handled borough by borough and wrapped up in under a year. Along the way, the team swapped out desk phones, helped agents adapt to new tools, and in some cases, issued laptops to staff who had never worked digitally before.
Introducing 8x8 Intelligent Customer Assistant
Today, the shared services team uses a full suite of 8x8 solutions, including 8x8 Contact Center, 8x8 Work, 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams, and more. In fact, Gavin’s team recently went live with the AI-enabled virtual agent, 8x8 Intelligent Customer Assistant (ICA). Even in its first hours, ICA showed strong results: 62% of calls were handled automatically, only 22% needed to be routed through the switchboard, and no complaints from residents or issues of any kind.
“It’s all been very positive regarding ICA,” said Gavin. “Any issues we had were resolved very quickly by the deployment team. From a customer’s perspective, I’ve not heard of any complaints—which, honestly, is a good sign.” The ICA build and deployment took just one month, a timeline Gavin attributes to both solid testing and confidence in the product. “Brent is very happy with the solution and looking forward to what we can use it for next.”
The team is also seeing early wins with video elevation, which lets agents escalate voice calls into video when residents are describing more complex issues like leaks and mold. “Video elevation helps reduce the length of calls,” said Gavin. “And it’s much easier for agents to pass on details to contractors—so they waste less time finding and verifying the issue.”
Seamless experience with 8x8 and Microsoft Teams
For Gavin and his team, the integration between 8x8 and Microsoft Teams has been a major strength. “It was kind of like a no-brainer to switch to Teams,” he said. “Everyone was already using it internally, and Microsoft deals with the updates. It just made sense.”
With 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams, agents now make and receive calls directly in the Teams interface, using the same platform they rely on for internal collaboration. “People don’t even realize 8x8 is running behind the scenes—a testament to its seamless integration,” Gavin said. “It’s invisible to the end user, which means it’s working.” That quiet reliability became especially critical during the pandemic. “It was lucky that we did have 8x8 when the pandemic hit. We were able to leave the offices because we were still able to work.”
One, reliable solution
For Gavin and his team, the value of 8x8 isn’t just in features—it’s in the steady, dependable experience it delivers day after day. “Over the years 8x8 has continued to improve its reliability, frontend, and backend,” he said. “It’s good value for the money, reliable, and it’s a nice interface for the end users.”
That reliability helped seal the deal: the shared services team recently renewed their 8x8 contract across all three boroughs. “8x8 ticks all the boxes for a council,” said Gavin. “Just keep doing what you’re doing and everyone’s happy.”
Looking ahead, Brent plans to continue refining Intelligent Customer Assistant to handle even more queries automatically, further easing agent workloads. Meanwhile, Southwark has 8x8 ICA Voice Intelligent Directory on the horizon—an AI-powered tool to streamline call routing and help residents reach the right department faster. With 8x8, the boroughs are ready to keep evolving and delivering better service for their communities.
