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VOCPhone for Government
Every enquiry is a service obligation and a record you have to keep.
Public sector call handling is judged differently to everything else. Volume is unpredictable, expectations are set by legislation and policy, and every interaction may need to be produced later.
Australian owned and hosted, which is usually a requirement
Keep every number you already advertise
We own and run the network, so uptime is ours to fix
Australian owned, hosted and supported, 15+ years in market
Hazard logged · reference texted
Mon 9:30am
Your contact centre09:30
Officers on calls, all lines engagedRostered for normal, not for an event.engaged
Resident reporting a fallen treeA safety issue, in a queue.22s48s74s99slost
Enquiry about a rates noticeSimple question, twelve minute wait.08s18s28s39slost
Calls answered. A queue the community will complain about publicly.
Said out loud in every service team
You have said at least four of these this quarter
These are service access and accountability problems that arrive down a phone line.
01
You cannot roster for an event
A storm or a policy announcement multiplies volume with no notice, and no contact centre can flex that fast.
Unlimited simultaneous answering, so an event never creates a queue.
02
Most volume is routine information
Bin days, hours, rates dates, permit requirements. Huge volume, no discretion required.
Handled entirely by the agent, freeing officers for real matters.
03
Safety reports queue behind rates questions
A fallen tree and a billing question wait in the same line, which is indefensible.
Safety and urgent matters prioritised absolutely.
04
Accessibility obligations are real
Community members with varied needs must be able to access services by phone, reliably.
Answered immediately, at any hour, with clear and patient speech.
05
Records are an obligation, not a nice to have
FOI, complaints and reviews all require an accurate record of what was said.
Every call recorded, transcribed and logged on our own Australian network.
06
Reporting is demanded and hard to produce
Councillors and executives ask about service levels you cannot currently measure well.
Complete call data, including abandonment, as a matter of course.
Watch one get handled
7:50am after a storm. Both calls handled without a queue.
This is the call that used to sit in a twelve minute queue. Here it is answered by a VOCPhone AI phone agent, from what you told it about your services.
It sounds like it is from here. Genuine Australian accents, clear and patient, not a call centre.
It knows your services, not your discretion. Bin days, hours, fees, forms, processes and where to lodge things. It does not make determinations.
It prioritises safety absolutely. A hazard report reaches an officer immediately, ahead of everything else.
It records everything onshore. Which is what an FOI request, a complaint or an audit will eventually need.
VPVOCPhone AI Agent Inbound · 00:43LIVE
AgentGood morning, you have called Barrowdale Council. How can I help?
ResidentThere is a large tree branch down across the footpath on Ellery Street. It is blocking the whole path.
AgentThank you for reporting that. Because it is blocking a footpath I will treat it as a safety matter. Is it affecting the road or any power lines?
ResidentNot the road, and I cannot see any wires involved.
AgentUnderstood. I have logged a hazard report for Ellery Street with those details and it is going to the works team now with a reference number. Can I take a contact number in case they need to reach you?
ResidentYes, it is oh four one one, two two two, three three three.
AgentThank you. Your reference is HZ four four nine one, which I have texted to you with an expected response time.
What happened before the contact centre opened
- Answered immediately with no queue, during an event period
- Triaged as a safety matter and checked for road and power involvement
- Hazard report logged and dispatched with a reference
- Reference number and response time texted to the resident
The number nobody tracks
Hold times become the story, whatever the service delivered
Public sector reputation is shaped disproportionately by access. A long queue becomes a complaint, a councillor question, or a media story, regardless of how well the underlying service performed.
1Volume is event driven and unstaffable. A storm, a policy change or a rates cycle can multiply call volume overnight, with no ability to roster for it.
2Most enquiries are genuinely routine. Bin days, opening hours, rates dates, permit processes. Enormous volume, no judgement required.
3Everything may need to be produced later. FOI, complaints, ombudsman reviews and audits all depend on records of what was said and when.
Officer time, per weekIllustrative. Put your own numbers in.
Inbound calls4,800
Answered by officers3,360
Abandoned in the queue1,440
Share that were purely routinex 0.60
Calls that abandoned in the queue864
Officer cost per routine call$9
Lost per week$7,776
Lost per year$404,352
Change the two highlighted lines to your own figures. The arithmetic is the point, not our example. That is officer time on calls no officer needed to take.
One number, an organisation behind it
A hazard report should never queue behind a rates question
Publish one number. Behind it, safety matters are prioritised, routine information is handled without an officer, and everything is recorded.
Live call being routedOverflow and after hours to the AI agent
Demand peaks
Storms, rates cycles and policy changes are all unstaffable
Public sector call volume is event driven. A storm, a rates notice cycle or a policy announcement multiplies demand within hours, and no roster can absorb that.
An AI agent answers unlimited simultaneous calls, so an event does not create a queue at all. Officers handle the matters that need discretion, and the community stops waiting on hold.
Inbound calls across a service yearshape, not scale
What your officers can realistically answer Overflow the AI agent picks up
Illustrative shape based on typical Australian council cycles. Your own curve depends on your services and region.
It plugs into what you already run
Your phone should know which matter is calling
VOCPhone connects to more than a thousand apps and offers open APIs, so a call arrives with a resident attached to it rather than just a number.
SalesforceHubSpotZohoXeroMondayGoogle WorkspaceMicrosoft 365SlackOpen APIs for the rest
Screen pops before you say hello
The caller's name, their history and their open request appear as it rings, so you open with their name instead of asking who is calling.
Click to call from the record
Ring a resident straight from your records or customer request system without typing a number, and every call logs itself against the right file.
Notes that write themselves
Recording, transcript, AI summary and next action land in your CRM. Untimed HD video for up to 30 people is included when a call needs faces.
Why VOCPhone
One provider, one network, one bill
Most providers sell you a phone system that runs on infrastructure they rent. We built ours, which changes what we can promise.
We own the network
Not a reseller reselling somebody else's switch. VOCPhone owns and operates its own Australian network, which is why we can guarantee 99.99% uptime and fix things ourselves.
AI phone agents that sound Australian
Inbound and outbound agents trained on your business. They answer, qualify, book and escalate, in a genuine Australian accent, at any hour.
Desk, desktop and pocket
Apps for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android, plus certified desk and cordless handsets. Untimed HD video for up to 30 people comes with it.
Australian, and answerable
Australian owned, Australian hosted, 24/7 human support, 15+ years in this market, and a price-match guarantee if you find better.
Straight answers
The questions councils and agencies ask us first
Will the AI make determinations or give rulings?
No, and we configure it explicitly not to. It provides published information and lodges requests. It does not exercise discretion, interpret policy, or make any determination that belongs to an officer.
Anything requiring judgement is routed to the appropriate team with the enquiry already captured, which shortens the officer's work rather than replacing it.
Is the platform Australian owned and hosted?
Yes, and unusually, VOCPhone owns and operates the underlying network rather than reselling somebody else's. It is Australian owned, hosted in Australian datacentres and supported by Australians, so calls, recordings and transcripts stay onshore.
We can provide the detail your procurement and information security teams will need to assess it properly, including where the call path actually runs.
How does this support FOI, complaints and audit?
Every call can be recorded, transcribed and logged with a timestamp and an outcome, which is considerably better than the notes a busy officer takes. You control retention periods and access.
Most organisations find the record keeping improvement is as valuable as the capacity increase, because responding to a complaint becomes a search rather than an investigation.
What happens when the AI cannot help?
It hands over, and you decide where. Anything requiring a determination, any complaint, and any media enquiry can go to a person, a queue, or a manager's mobile.
The caller does not repeat themselves either. Whoever picks up gets the context the agent already gathered. Outside hours it takes the details, texts a confirmation and queues the callback.
What difference does owning the network actually make?
Most providers resell somebody else's switch, which means when something breaks they raise a ticket with a wholesaler and wait, exactly like you would. VOCPhone built and runs its own Australian network, so we fix it ourselves.
It is also why we can put a number on uptime and offer a price match. There is no reseller margin stacked in the middle of your bill.
We run more than one service centre. Does that work?
That is where it earns its keep. Advertise one number and we route behind it by service centre, by time of day and by queue, with overflow so a call at a flat out service centre rings somewhere quieter.
Each service centre can keep its own greeting and direct number. Reporting rolls up across all of them.
Do we have to change our phone number?
No. Number portability is standard, including 1300 and 1800, so the number on every published service and department number stays exactly as it is.
We port it across and plan the cutover around your hours, not ours.
Voice over Cloud
Answer the community without a queue, and keep the record
Book fifteen minutes. Show us how public enquiries reach you today, and we will show you the version that survives a storm.
1300 663 222 · vocphone.com · Australian owned and operated