NSW National Parks tenders for customer contact answering service

The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) has issued a tender for the provision of customer contact answering services.

NPWS routinely receives calls from the public who are either visiting or planning to visit a park and are seeking information about their visit, assistance while they are in a park, or want to report something they have seen in a park. These calls create the need for a 24/7 answering service.

The answering service has two key roles, the first to provide accurate and timely resolution of incoming telephone calls from park users, the public, NPWS stakeholders and emergency services.

The second key role is to complete welfare checks on lone or vulnerable NPWS workers across the state.

A further requirement is the answering service must be able to respond to callers where English is spoken but not necessarily the caller’s first language.

The call answering system is required to have a case management system capable of call and interaction recording, including voice recording of all calls; reporting of interactions and key performance metrices; and data transfer to NPWS Salesforce CRM Preferred service features include.

The answering service will also have a web portal that records the conversations associated with each call and retains meta data including a record of all incoming calls, actions taken in response to each call, and details the efficiency with which each call is managed.

Meta data records are to be retained for three years for basic customer service enquiries relating to NPWS services, and seven years for complaints or suggestions that require investigation or a specific response.

Forecast demand for the answering service is 6,000 calls per annum, with a further 400 staff welfare check calls.

The initial contract term is three years, with NPWS able to extend the contract, at its discretion, by either one or two extensions of two years each. The maximum contract term is seven years.

The tender closes on 22 May at 3PM AEST with a decision estimated in early July.

In 2023, the NPWS issued a tender to replace its 11-year-old fire and incident management system with a software-as-a-service offering.