The purpose of this Request for Proposals (RFP) is to solicit proposals to replace the City of Newport News Waterworks (NNWW) Department's existing business telephone system with a modern, reliable, and scalable Voice over IP (VoIP) business telephone system. This comprehensive system shall meet the communication needs of the entire City of Newport News Waterworks Department across all its locations, and critically, must include robust Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and mass notification capabilities. The new system shall facilitate seamless automated customer interactions, support efficient call routing, provide 24/7 self-service options (bill payments, account inquiries, outage reporting, service requests), and offer other essential customer service functionalities. The City is open to considering premise-based, cloud-based hosted solutions, or hybrid models, and proposals should clearly define the proposed architecture. The solution shall be a turnkey offering, encompassing all necessary hardware, software, implementation, training, and ongoing support. The awarded contractor shall provide industry best practices and water utility-specific templates for IVR call flows, messaging, and system configuration as part of their support to the NNWW core implementation team.
