South Staffordshire District Council Digitizes and Automates Services with Verint
Verint for Citizen Engagement helps the 2022 UK Council of the Year elevate citizen experiences through digital self-service.
The results
Generated over $1 million in added revenue income.
Delivers services faster, in turn enhancing the citizen experience.
Optimized contact center workload.
About South Staffordshire District Council
South Staffordshire District Council, which was selected as the UK Council of the Year in 2022, is a district council in the West Midlands, England. The council provides various government services ranging from council tax collection, benefits payments, and planning applications to waste collection.
The opportunity
South Staffordshire District Council initiated a customer experience improvement program to transform the services it delivers for its customers with the help of digital technology and automation. The council aimed to create a collaborative way of working that would have a positive impact on residents, businesses, and staff while delivering operational efficiency, financial benefits, and return on investment.
“The program is about transforming the way we deliver services to our customers and residents,” says Andy Hoare, Assistant Director of Business Transformation and Digital Technology at South Staffordshire District Council. “We want to help our customers become more independent. Instead of relying on the council, we want them to be able to easily do things for themselves.”
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“We’ve worked very closely and collaboratively with the Verint team. This not only helped us create components that are reusable and can be applied to many processes and forms, but also gave us the skill and knowledge transfer we needed to become self-sufficient going forward.”
Solution
South Staffordshire District Council implemented Verint for Citizen Engagement to elevate citizen services. A best-of-breed cloud solution, Verint for Citizen Engagement enables the council to drive greater CX automation and, in turn, faster ROI via self-service, and automate customer notifications, satisfaction feedback, and performance reporting.
“The objective was to introduce a rapid development program using Verint for Citizen Engagement as a CRM solution to deliver change quickly for our customers, residents, and businesses here in South Staffordshire, as well as within the council itself,” Hoare highlights.
Verint helped maximize channel-shift by enabling intuitive online forms for customers on South Staffordshire District Council’s web site. The forms are an integral part of the Verint Citizen Engagement solution, so customer requests are automatically routed and immediately available to the appropriate South Staffordshire Council team for response. “At the same time, because we expect to continue to receive requests through email and other channels, citizens can still call an agent to complete the request within the system,” explains Hoare.
“Verint also enabled us to introduce an online Freedom of Information (FOI) service,” explains Kevin Hubery, Corporate Policy Manager at South Staffordshire District Council. “The Verint Citizen Engagement solution enables us to manage the complete FOI process from initial receipt, allocation to a local team manager, response preparation, and the sending of the final response to the citizen.”
The benefits
Once implemented, South Staffordshire District Council was able to offer self-service capabilities to its customers. It not only accelerated channel shift, but also boosted efficiency. This included the seamless integration of the council’s address, mapping, payment, and billing systems with Verint’s Citizen Engagement solution.
The council’s web site highlights the top four transaction types based on customer activities (apply, pay, report, and request). This enables residents to easily find and request various services, such as garden waste collection, tree works permissions, council tax payments, fixed penalty notice payments, bulky waste collection, and more.
Garden waste was the first service to go live, permitting residents to sign up online for their garden waste bins to be emptied. As a result:
- 90 percent of residents who signed up did so online.
- 29,000 residents used the form within the first six months of its launch.
- Over $1 million GBP in added revenue income was generated.
Since the success of the garden waste service, South Staffordshire District Council has added another 15 online services. Thanks to Verint’s intuitive forms, the council receives a growing number of online requests, helping it to do more with less and easing the burden on employees.
Further, thanks to the council’s customer experience improvement program, it enhanced its compliance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOI). With the best-of-breed CX automation gained through Verint for Citizen Engagement, the council now addresses FOI requests more efficiently and effectively.
“The Verint solution is set up to remind customers and service agents of the 20-day deadline as the countdown proceeds,” concludes Hubery. “Another advantage is that both the requests and the responses to the requests are all captured within the same system. Previously, it was a very manual system.”
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Verint for Citizen Engagement
Elevate your citizen engagement by transforming your service delivery with our cloud solutions. Leverage digital, self-service, and traditional service channels to deliver services beyond expectations. Boost efficiency and reduce costs through integrated services. Improve agent performance and employee satisfaction.
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