Region of Waterloo Improves Performance and Service Delivery with Verint

The Region of Waterloo is a two-tier government system that provides services to residents, including waste collection, public health, housing, employment, and income support. The Region of Waterloo’s Service First Call Centre answers non-emergency calls related to citizen service.

Although these are non-emergency calls, they are extremely important to citizens and the Service First Call Centre. To respond in a timely manner and provide the best possible customer service, the region needed to ensure its contact center is adequately staffed and agents have the tools to work efficiently.

Region of Waterloo needed a comprehensive contact center solution to help manage communications, while providing detailed analysis of how agents could improve performance and, in turn, service delivery. Additionally, the solution had to support 24/7 self-service options for customers to further elevate citizen experience — all in an easy-to-use suite.

Using Verint Workforce Management, the region can strategically align workforce capacity and call volumes, optimizing planning, forecasting, and scheduling. With Verint Quality Management and Verint Desktop and Process Analytics, the region is armed with critical information on service performance through recorded calls, agent scorecards, and other data. This insight is vital to support agent coaching and skills development for improved performance.

“The Verint platform enables managers and staff to see in real-time what they are dealing with and where they need to improve,” says Sheri Markle, Manager of the Service First Call Centre at Region of Waterloo. “That empowers better engagement between staff and residents and enables residents to receive the information they need in a timely and concise manner.”

Leveraging Verint Engagement Management Professional, the Service First Call Centre can take a more holistic approach to customer service by combining knowledge, process, data, and channels into a single, unified platform. In turn, this enables the region to deliver exceptional service and a superior experience to residents across their preferred channels of interaction.

Similar benefits and results have been seen across staff forecasting and scheduling as well. Prior to Verint, workforce management was non-existent in the Service First Call Centre. Staffing was done via a “best-guess approach” for call types and times of operation. Now, with Verint Workforce Management, the region has visibility into call volumes and historical data to optimize scheduling and call coverage.

“We are constantly looking to enhance service options, particularly through self-service, and Verint is a catalyst for much of our simplification, modernization, and automation efforts,” adds Markle. “We are working on an online process for residents to request general housing repairs and consider- ing other online processes to further streamline requests and expedite service delivery.”

Whereas users can sometimes be intimidated in learning how to juggle different options for the best outcomes, the Verint software is very user-friendly, Markle concludes. “It is simple for our residents and our staff to use. It is an easy tool that anyone can use to find the information they need. Furthermore, I feel like I have an ally with Verint.”