Zoom Phone: A Great Call for State and Local Government Communications

While COVID-19 forced the public sector to evolve its traditional process, the experience proved that not only is government work possible fully remote, some it is better because of it. For instance, virtual and hybrid community meetings have proven to be more inclusive and help elevate the voices of many previously muted citizens. Government agencies have seen how this digital aspect helps improve outreach and engagement. 

Now, as state and local governments look to return to the office in some capacity, they’re examining what processes can — and should — stay virtual, or at least a combination of both in-person and remote elements.

To enable this level of flexibility, state and local agencies are implementing solutions to streamline and secure their mission-critical functions and communications. 

That’s where Zoom Phone comes in.

Across the country, state and local government agencies manage a diverse set of departmental requirements and user scenarios, all while working on an aging phone system. They need a reliable, cost-effective telephony solution — one that supports users working across multiple locations and departments, on both home and office networks. Zoom Phone is flexible enough to support the needs of all your different stakeholders, providing modern communication features while remaining agile and scalable.

With Zoom Phone, agencies can also improve service delivery — supporting their community through simplified, efficient processes. A few examples: 

• Local health organizations can streamline the way they field incoming inquiries from constituents via call queues — all in an environment that supports HIPAA compliance
• Local representatives can be available any time for all levels of communications, enabling greater mobility
• A state court can call in members of a case on a secure line, elevating the phone call to a video meeting with the click of a button
• State government administrators can use streamlined management tools, such as the call routing feature, to delegate administration across departments and teams
• Crisis workers can easily create a call recording to keep track of communications that will need a government record

As a modern cloud phone system, Zoom Phone helps your agency create a consistent, quality experience for users, no matter where they’re working from. It comes with enterprise-class PBX features that state and local governments need to communicate efficiently with the public and other agencies. A few of these include:

• Call queues: You can configure incoming calls to route to a designated group of users. Call distribution can be configured based on simultaneous, sequential, or rotating options.

• Auto-receptionist and IVR templates: To save time, you can copy business hours, greeting prompts, and routing rules across your entire phone system. Settings can be modified as necessary.

• Caller ID masking for employee number privacy: Depending on the purpose of the call, users can choose to display caller ID as their direct number, a main office number, a call queue, or no caller ID at all. This feature helps support the privacy and security of your employees’ personal contact information.

• Reporting and analytics: Leveraging the easy-to-use centralized administration portal, you can provision and manage users, intelligently monitor business interactions, and more.

• Voicemail transcription: Zoom Phone provides visual voicemail and automatic transcription if you prefer to read voicemail messages. Voicemail notifications are delivered via email with a transcription of the message and an audio file attachment. They can also be accessed in the Zoom client. 

• Single client experience: Zoom is available on PC, Mac, iOS, and Android. Once licenses are provisioned, a full-featured phone experience will be available in the Zoom mobile and desktop application which provides one easy platform for communications.

For state and local government agencies that adhere to the security requirements of the Federal Government, Zoom offers a separate, specialized platform called Zoom for Government, which includes Zoom Phone, Zoom Meetings, Zoom Webinars, Zoom Rooms, and Zoom Team Chat. 

Zoom for Government offers the same experience as the standard Zoom platform, but with a few differences:

• Hosted 100% in the U.S. on the AWS GovCloud and two co-located data centers
• Operated by U.S. persons only
• Received FedRAMP and StateRAMP Moderate authorizations
• Supports HIPAA, CJIS, and CMMC compliance requirements
• Achieved DOD Impact Level 4 (IL4)

Whether a state or local government needs to enable mobility for representatives or field a slew of incoming calls, Zoom Phone delivers secure communications that can help streamline and update legacy processes. With this modern telephony solution, employees can work from anywhere as they evolve the way they serve constituents.

Learn more about Zoom for Government or check out the on-demand webinar Modernizing Government Communications with Zoom Phone.

Editor’s note: This blog post was edited on Sept. 22, 2022 to include the most up to date information on Zoom for Government.