Uniting NSW.ACT, serving New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, has embarked on a transformative journey to enhance its client support services through innovative technology. With a workforce of over 12,000 staff, Uniting NSW.ACT provides vital services including aged care, disability support, child and family programs, mental health services, and community outreach. Their mission to inspire people, enliven communities, and confront injustice through practical care and advocacy drives their commitment to delivering compassionate and effective support to vulnerable and disadvantaged Australians.
Overcoming Legacy Limitations
Before adopting Cisco’s Webex Contact Center and Webex Calling solutions, Uniting NSW.ACT faced significant challenges in managing the high volume of customer interactions across its geographically dispersed contact centers. The organization relied on a legacy on-premises solution which created significant “blind spots” for the business.
The organization struggled with limited visibility into call volumes and inefficient call routing, which often resulted in misdirected calls and long wait times for clients. Craig Mendel, Senior Manager of IT Customer Experience at Uniting, notes that the legacy setup offered no data on the behavior or overall experience of clients. “The business had no visibility on how or what type of calls were being handled, the number of calls being received, and the behavior and overall experience from those clients,” Mendel explained.
This lack of visibility had a direct impact on operations. A centralized home and community care team was frequently overwhelmed by administrative calls, despite their role being focused on service delivery. Furthermore, because the system provided no written communication or confirmation to clients, many would call back simply because they couldn’t remember if they had successfully canceled or scheduled an appointment.
“Calls were taking up to 15 minutes for our agents to handle, because our clients love to chat, and we knew that there was up to 15-minute wait time in call queues,” says Mendel. “We knew that clients could only call us during business hours instead of being able to call us whenever suits them.”
Centralizing Customer Care
Recognizing these challenges, Uniting NSW.ACT partnered with Webex by Cisco and Cisco Partner Optus to implement a comprehensive Webex Contact Center solution. “I call the relationship between Cisco, Optus, and Uniting the ‘triangle of trust’ because we went to Cisco with that problem statement and they helped us come up with potential solutions for those problems,” said Mendel.
The transition involved migrating five legacy contact centers to the cloud Webex CloudContact Center solution and building two additional centers from the ground up. Today, the ecosystem supports approximately 600 agents. This includes a significant portion of mobile phone agents, specifically, coordinators who use mobile devices to schedule home care appointments, and 260 agents on standard Webex licenses.
Webex Contact Center’s cloud-based platform centralized management and routing, delivering advanced call routing with an impressive 93% accuracy—up from a previous 60%, a 55% increase. This significantly reduced misdirected calls and improved the client experience. The new system finally provided the “normal contact center matrix” of data, allowing the business to understand call volumes and monitor the quality of every interaction.
Innovating with AI
A key innovation in this transformation was the pilot deployment of Webex AI Agent, which the Uniting team affectionately named ’Jeanie’. Officially launched on October 23, 2025, Jeanie represents a monumental leap forward in Uniting NSW.ACT’s commitment to compassionate, efficient, and accessible client support. Designed as the first point of contact for many client homecare appointment inquiries, Jeanie leverages advanced AI and natural language processing to understand and respond to a wide range of questions.
From providing information on service eligibility and updating personal details to directing clients to the most appropriate human agent for specialized support, Jeanie ensures clients receive prompt and accurate assistance around the clock. The best part about Jeanie? The empathy and patience it shows with Uniting’s customers.
Mendel likes how the AI agent, Jeanie, shows empathy. For example, if a client is struggling to find their ID, it reassures them by saying, “No worries, take your time. I’m here to help.”
Data-Driven Deployment and Trusted Partnership
To ensure a successful Jeanie deployment, the team used Topic Analytics to define core problem statements as their first step. They identified that 10 to 14 percent of calls related to appointment cancellations, which took up to 15 minutes to handle. This data-driven focus helped shape Jeanie’s initial use case.
One of the critical learnings from the deployment was the importance of real-time analytics for AI agents to enable effective scaling. The team discovered that going live quickly unlocked a “flywheel effect,” where new use cases emerged organically. Starting with appointment cancellations, the AI agent’s capabilities rapidly expanded to include handling appointment types, providing information on who their support worker will be, and offering estimated wait times for human agent escalation.
Saving Time, Boosting Productivity, and Enhancing Client Satisfaction
The impact of Jeanie has been transformative. Mendel comments, “In the first six months, we’ve estimated that there’s been about 580 hours saved of human talk time through the application of the AI agent.”
In addition to these time savings, Uniting saw a 12% reduction in total call volume. The AI agent successfully resolved over 60 percent of routine inquiries on the first interaction and fully handled more than 40 percent of all incoming calls without human intervention, saving 220 hours of customer wait time. This shift has allowed agents to move away from administrative tasks to focus on more complex and empathetic engagements.
For calls requiring human assistance, Jeanie’s pre-qualification and information gathering reduced average handling time by 11 percent. Agents reported decreased burnout and increased job satisfaction, contributing to a 15 percent boost in productivity. Additionally, initial feedback revealed an 8 percent increase in client satisfaction scores among users who interacted with Jeanie.
Craig Mendel shared, “Our pilot clients, aged 66–93, love interacting with our Webex AI Agent Jeanie — no waiting, they can call when it suits them, personalized natural conversations, and a strong willingness to use AI rating.”
A New Era of Compassionate, Efficient, and Intelligent Customer Care
The official launch of Jeanie marks a new chapter for Uniting NSW.ACT, demonstrating how intelligent automation combined with human empathy can transform customer experience. Webex Contact Center and Webex Calling have enabled Uniting to deliver compassionate, efficient, and accessible support, driving measurable ROI and setting a foundation for continuous innovation in customer care.
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