BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Senator Ricardo Lara, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular Session
SB 449 (Nielsen) - State contracts: telecommunications:
callback features
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|Version: April 8, 2015 |Policy Vote: G.O. 11 - 0 |
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|Urgency: No |Mandate: No |
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|Hearing Date: April 27, 2015 |Consultant: Mark McKenzie |
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This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill
Summary: SB 449 would require state agency contracts for the
acquisition of telecommunications services, including contract
renewals, to provide for a queue callback feature, as specified,
beginning in 2016.
Fiscal
Impact: Unknown, potentially significant costs in a given
fiscal year, depending on the number of agencies enter into
telecommunications contracts, the functionality of an agency's
current systems, and the volume of calls fielded by a particular
agency.
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Based upon experiences in several departments that have
implemented queue callback systems, one-time costs for a single
agency could range from $150,000 to $600,000, with ongoing costs
in the low to high hundreds of thousands. In the aggregate,
ongoing costs would likely exceed $1 million, to the extent
state agencies would not have implemented a queue callback
feature absent the bill. (see staff comments)
Background: Existing law requires the Department of Technology
(Department) to establish policies and procedures regarding the
acquisition of telecommunications goods and services. Existing
law generally requires the Department to act as the contracting
entity on behalf of state agencies for the acquisition of
telecommunications goods and services, or to supervise those
contracts.
Proposed Law:
On or after January 1, 2016, SB 449 would require any contract
for the acquisition of telecommunications services, including
contract renewals, for a state agency that interacts with the
general public to provide for a queue callback feature that
allows callers to have the option of receiving a call back from
an agency representative, rather than waiting on hold for the
next available representative. The bill exempts the
Legislature, as well as courts and other judicial entities, from
the new requirement.
Staff
Comments: This bill is intended to improve the efficiency of
state agency staff interactions with the general public, and
make state government more user-friendly.
Queue callback features are intended to work in the following
manner: when a customer calls a particular entity and all of the
entity's representatives are busy, the customer is given the
option of either staying on the line or receiving a call back
once a representative becomes available. If the customer
chooses the callback option, he or she would hang up the phone
and the system would call the customer back and connect him or
her to an available customer service representative.
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The Department of Motor Vehicles began offering a queue callback
feature in 2011, which offers a customer the option of receiving
a call back if the average wait times exceed five minutes. DMV
indicates their system has a 75 percent "take rate" of customers
requesting a call back. DMV one-time costs to develop and
implement a "virtual hold solution" system were $150,000, and
annual ongoing costs are approximately $800,000, including
platform costs and monthly call volume charges. DMV has
abnormally busy call centers, fielding an average of 20,000
calls per day.
The Employment Development Department (EDD) implemented a voice
call back feature into existing call centers in September of
2014. A companion "scheduled call back feature," which provides
the option to make an appointment to speak to an agent, is
scheduled for implementation in September of 2015. To date, EDD
indicates their system has a 38 percent "take rate," queueing
about 1.2 million calls since implementation. EDD reports
one-time costs to develop and implement a queue call back system
was approximately $600,000, with annual ongoing costs of
approximately $423,000, based upon expected transactions and
annual platform costs.
Staff notes that this bill would likely apply to over 200 state
entities. It is unknown how many currently have
telecommunications features that are in compliance with the
requirements of the bill. If even a small number of state
agencies that field significant call volume from the public were
to implement queue call back features, one-time costs in a given
year could be significant. Ongoing aggregate costs are likely
to reach the millions in future years. There could be some
savings related to efficiencies and workload management
benefits, but these are unquantifiable at this time.
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