The municipality of Emmen – with over 109.000 residents – has a policy of being easily accessible. Both the telephone exchange and the customer contact platform were due for replacement. Linda Boerman and Daniëlle Weggemans explain how the municipality of Emmen, together with their implementation partner Frontline Solutions, transitioned to a new, cloud-based customer contact platform from Genesys.

 

Both Linda Boerman (services advisor at the Public Affairs team) as Danielle Weggemans (Project leader in the Automation team) were closely involved in the implementation, which is part of the modernization of various IT components. However, more than just modernization was at stake for the customer contact platform: the application ran on the municipality of Emmen's own hardware (on-premise) and was end-of-life. The licenses for the existing Genesys application were due to expire on December 15, 2025. The municipality of Emmen therefore faced a multifaceted challenge: selecting a new customer contact platform with a rapid implementation as a prerequisite, without compromising the municipality's accessibility. And, of course, the platform also had to be future-proof—the municipality has adopted a cloud-unless IT strategy.

Image: INTREGUE Photography/Shutterstock.com

Municipality of Emmen Emmen is the largest municipality in the province of Drenthe and a large and vibrant municipality in the northeast of the Netherlands with nearly 110.000 residents. The organization stands for decisiveness, continuous development, and flexibility. Emmen offers an environment with beautiful nature, characteristic villages, and a vibrant city center and aims to contribute to a safe, healthy, and sustainable living environment where people feel at home and enjoy living. Emmen employs over a thousand people and collaborates closely with several surrounding municipalities.

The customer contact organization of Emmen

Linda Boerman outlines the part of the municipal organization involved in customer contact. “The Public Affairs team includes the Customer Contact Center (CCC) and the Civil Affairs cluster, totaling approximately 50 employees. About half of them work specifically at the CCC and answer the phone, respond to live chat, handle emails, and assist people at the information desk. The municipality of Emmen also uses WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram; the municipality has stopped using X, formerly Twitter. Citizens can also submit questions from the Emmen website, and there's a My Desk environment where residents can track the status and progress of processes, provided they're logged in with DigiD. These kinds of processes are managed through a case management system.”

The My Environment also contains a record of a citizen's contacts with the municipality, including, for example, answers from staff members of the various specialist teams who can respond to more complex questions. "In most cases, around 60%, the KCC can handle the citizen's question directly," says Boerman.

The other half of Public Affairs falls under the Civil Affairs team. These employees also staff the counters for matters such as travel documents, driver's licenses, and marriages. "Some of the KCC team are trained to work at the Civil Affairs counters," says Boerman. They mainly do this during the second half of the week, as Mondays are busier at the KCC. The scheduling of less time-sensitive administrative work is adjusted accordingly.

The replacement question

The municipality of Emmen has worked with Genesys for a long time. Naturally, they knew the existing on-premises solution needed replacing. At the same time, Emmen is also modernizing its IT, including the transition from an on-premises PBX to telephony based on Teams, explains Danielle Weggemans. In the search for a successor—both platform and supplier—the municipality of Emmen was able to negotiate a multiple-party tender due to the estimated contract values.

"We've conducted market research and mapped out our current in-house functionality. What are our minimum requirements, and what innovations do we want to implement, both within the KCC and in terms of technology? During the tender process, we also requested an implementation plan, outlining the relevant timelines. The requirements brief was presented to several parties," says Weggemans.

When drawing up the programme of requirements, security and privacy experts from within the municipality were involved, because cloud solutions must, according to the law, at least comply with the baseline government information security (BIO), Weggemans explains. Within the municipality, issues such as sovereignty and the locations where data is stored are regular topics of discussion. Very little data is stored in the customer contact software; the case management system is the primary system. "That's hosted in the Netherlands," Weggemans says.

Replace or renew and innovate?

A cloud migration can be used as a moment of reflection: do you stick with what you had, for example because it fits well, or are there reasons to implement changes – in technology, or also in processes?

Boerman explains: “We definitely wanted to maintain the existing functionality. Good phone accessibility is paramount for Emmen. We also wanted all contact flows—telephony, chat, social media, and web forms—that are handled by the KCC to be integrated into a single application. While we're not working on AI yet, we are certainly exploring the possibilities in that area. We want to prevent a specific choice from leading to limitations, but the requirements didn't include any strict requirements in this regard.”

“We don't have an IVR: in Emmen you simply dial the KCC number and someone will answer the phone.”

Chat is an excellent channel for automating customer contact, but Boerman is adamant: “We want to be easily accessible. We monitor our service, both for customer contact and for reports. Our excellent accessibility is a positive development every quarter. At the municipality of Emmen, citizens are assisted by live employees through the chat channel. Endlessly clicking through options isn't always considered user-friendly. That's why we don't have an IVR: in Emmen, you simply dial the KCC number and someone will answer the phone.”

The choice

Requesting an implementation plan during the tender was relevant for Emmen given the short notice of the replacement. The final choice fell on Frontline Solutions with Genesys Cloud CX 2, not only because the offer was satisfactory, but especially because this implementation partner excelled in the comprehensiveness of the plan. Weggemans: "We didn't impose any restrictions on the scope of the implementation plan to be submitted. After the tender, we were pleased with that decision. Frontline delivered a very comprehensive action plan, including all sorts of documentation. That provided a very good overview. We complimented Frontline on that."

The implementation

Weggemans: “Frontline Solutions began the implementation process in early September 2025. We weren't just under time pressure for the migration due to the strict deadline of December 15th. There were also other technical changes that needed to be implemented in the correct order. For example, the migration from the on-premises Alcatel PBX to Teams telephony was tied to the cloud migration from Genesys: doing everything simultaneously would have meant the back office would be temporarily unavailable for the KCC.”

Simultaneously with the Genesys implementation, around mid-November 2025, a session border controller (SBC) was also installed. This software ensures proper routing of incoming and internal traffic. The KCC remained easily accessible, but after the Genesys launch, it became apparent that calls forwarded from the KCC to the back office or the external service provider responsible for after-hours support were occasionally dropped. Frontline quickly provided a workaround. After that, it was a matter of figuring out the exact problem for the various technicians—including those from the SBC's vendor, a third-party provider. "It was a matter of working together, meticulously reviewing and excluding everything. Ultimately, it turned out that our firewalls were sometimes approving the calls' TLS certificates and sometimes not," said Weggemans.

Process adjustments

The municipality of Emmen transitioned to the new application landscape without any major process changes. However, some changes were implemented. Boerman gives an example: "We did change one thing, and we're very happy about it: callers who end up in the queue can now request a callback. We couldn't offer that option to callers before."

Weggemans adds: "We critically examined the various discussions: what should and shouldn't be handled through Genesys? That has an impact on the number of licenses."

Call flows with high demands on availability and reachability are handled with Genesys, which offers all sorts of functional design options that aren't necessary for all flows. Weggemans: "The Tax department only receives a high volume of calls during a very limited period. We removed those calls from the Genesys environment. The internal service desk has also been moved from Genesys to the Teams environment. The same applies to the municipal swimming pools. We've reduced the number of numbers for the various back offices from ten to two: the Civil Affairs team and the Benefits Processing team."

Changes for employees

With Genesys Cloud CX, employees no longer work in a separate application, but in the browser, with a screen that offers more information than before. Furthermore, employees have switched from Citrix and Windows 10-based thin clients to Windows 11 laptops, and they now work with three screens instead of two. "Eventually," says Weggemans, "we'd like to integrate the case management system into this screen, so that caller information is visible when it's recognized. The current case management system isn't yet suitable for this. Work is underway to transition to a new case management system. According to Boerman, the transition to the browser-based environment took some getting used to, but little further training was required: "Our employees are very skilled."

What did the citizen notice?

Weggemans: "The starting point was that citizens shouldn't be inconvenienced by this migration. That's why it was carried out in the evenings, to minimize any disruption to residents and businesses. We succeeded in that."

“And the call-back option has been used by citizens from day one, which is great to see,” says Boerman.

“We initially kept the implementation simple and straightforward – so we set clear priorities – and that certainly contributed to the success.”

"We've been working to a very tight schedule so far. This also requires flexibility from our implementation partner. Frontline Solutions has been very flexible from day one. For example, by working with us to determine what absolutely needed to be in place before the go-live date and what we could potentially adjust afterward," says Weggemans. "Frontline Solutions is also very accessible: you can quickly connect with the right person. This is important to us, because during the migration, we also had extensive discussions about exactly what we wanted and what the best options were. We initially kept the implementation simple and straightforward—setting clear priorities—and that definitely contributed to the success."

The future

The municipality of Emmen is now transitioning "from implementation to support," and that includes the future. In this first, completed phase of the implementation, the focus was on a smooth transition to new solutions. Next, the integration of chat and social media into Genesys will follow. Of course, the municipality of Emmen is also exploring opportunities in AI and customer contact, but there's no roadmap yet, as there's still a lot of work to be done. "We're staggering the steps because we want to consider how many changes an organization can handle simultaneously. Emmen is also the IT supplier for several surrounding municipalities, where migrations are also planned."

Boerman: "We definitely want to keep up with the times. To get a sense of what else is possible, we've arranged regular meetings with Frontline. We're also following developments at supplier Genesys through events and newsletters. Boerman thinks an application like Agent Assist is fantastic: it makes it easier for them to find answers faster, be more comprehensive, and provide people with better and more complete information."

(Ziptone/Erik Bouwer)

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