Palmerston North City Council (PNCC), serving over 91,000 residents in one of New Zealand’s fastest-growing regions, needed to rapidly modernise its contact centre during the pandemic to ensure seamless citizen engagement and workforce continuity. Its on-premise system lacked scalability, remote access, and multichannel capabilities, hindering both operational agility and customer satisfaction.
Partnering with Black Box, PNCC adopted the Genesys Cloud CX3 contact centre solution, integrated with Carrier Services and supported by a dedicated Client Success Programme. The initiative not only enabled remote operations within weeks but also laid the foundation for a resilient, flexible, and future-ready customer engagement environment.
The Council’s ageing on-premise contact centre could not support remote or hybrid work, offered limited communication channels, and required external vendor intervention for routine updates. Its inflexible architecture restricted scalability and slowed service response, leading to inefficiencies during high-demand periods.
When the pandemic hit, PNCC faced an aggressive timeline to deploy a modern solution that would ensure uninterrupted public services. The Council needed a secure, cloud-based platform that empowered internal teams, reduced operational dependency, and aligned with its long-term digital transformation goals.
Black Box deployed the Genesys Cloud CX3 platform to transform PNCC’s contact centre into a scalable, cloud-native environment that could support a distributed workforce and enhanced citizen experience. The solution provided voice routing for remote agents, automation for manual workflows, and intuitive tools for administrators to independently manage call flows and configurations.
Integration with Microsoft Teams and the Council’s ticketing system created a unified communication ecosystem, while new features such as “walk-in” interaction capture expanded visibility into citizen touchpoints. Supported by the Client Success Programme, PNCC gained ongoing optimisation, training, and access to advanced functionalities for continuous improvement.
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RESULTS
BENEFITS
PNCC achieved a rapid, on-budget deployment that ensured uninterrupted service delivery and immediate enablement of remote operations. The new platform expanded citizen engagement channels - voice, email, and web messaging—and introduced self-service capabilities for faster resolutions.
Internal teams became self-sufficient, managing updates and scaling with ease, while automated workflows replaced manual tasks, enhancing accuracy and efficiency. Today, PNCC operates New Zealand’s largest after-hours local government contact centre, supporting more than half the country’s councils with reliable, high-performance services.
PNCC selected Black Box for its deep expertise in cloud-based contact centre solutions and its proven ability to deliver transformation aligned with long-term strategic goals. Black Box’s combination of technical proficiency and customer success focus ensured a seamless rollout, strong adoption, and ongoing enhancement.
The partnership continues to evolve through innovation and collaboration, enabling PNCC to expand capabilities such as abusive-caller alerts and workforce management tools—strengthening both employee experience and citizen satisfaction.
“The after sales care we have experienced is what has made the difference. Their knowledge of the solution has helped us expand our depth of use of the rich functionality within the platform, and the partnership has grown strongly throughout.
We very much appreciated the eagerness of Black Box to help transform our environment by working with other vendors to create the ‘single pane of glass’ experience for our agents. ”
Peter Roberts
Business Manager, Contact Centre Services
Palmerston North City Council
Publishing Date: November 25th, 2025
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Industry: Government
Solution: Modern Workplace
