The City of Edinburgh Council Increases Customer Satisfaction from 70% to 85% with Verint

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85% Satisfaction
Increased customer satisfaction from 70% to 85%
30% Use
Use of online self-service increased from 5% to 30%.
6 Months
Deployed the solution in six months to achieve quicker ROI

About The City of Edinburgh Council

The City of Edinburgh Council is always looking to the future; continually exploring innovative ways to enhance its customer service capabilities using digital-first strategies. By implementing new services that put residents and businesses first, the leading Scottish local authority can deliver superior service with less effort.

However, to achieve heightened customer-centricity, the Council first had to overcome some challenges. Most notably, its legacy customer relationship management (CRM) system was no longer fit for purpose. The Council aspired to ensure that the citizen journey was joined up and could be viewed end to end by employees, and with residents receiving proactive communications to inform them of the progress of their enquiry.

Opportunity: Deliver superior service with less effort

When a citizen contacted the Council to report an incident, such as a broken street light or a missed bin collection, there was no single, end-to-end view of that transaction. The 200 agents in the Council’s call centre had to switch between systems in support of citizens’ needs, leading to a less than optimal customer experience due to disconnected, delayed responses.

“Our original processes were built to suit the Council’s needs, which is something that many organisations fall into the trap of,” says Nicola Harvey, Head of Customer & Digital Services at City of Edinburgh Council.

“The Council now aspires to put the citizens’ needs first, which in turn will make us more effective, efficient and allow us to deal with the enquiry at first point of contact. Our new aim was to do what we promised to do: get the basics right, respond quickly and proactively to the people of Edinburgh – whatever the request. That new customer journey also needed to be digital-led, simple, and efficient.”

Solution: Verint for Citizen Engagement

The Council engaged with four vendors, creating a “heat map” to assess the capabilities of each potential solution provider. Verint was tops across much of the criteria, ranging from product functionality and track record, to speed of implementation and future roadmap.

“Whereas some vendors shoe-horned their solution to meet our goals, the Verint platform was fit for purpose from day one,” Harvey explains. “The rich, out-of-the-box functionality was ideal for a public authority like the City of Edinburgh Council. In addition, Verint never over-promised. We could trust doing business with them.”

Working in close collaboration with Verint’s professional services team, along with integration partner CGI, the Council deployed Verint Engagement Management Professional in just six months. The Verint solution integrates a multichannel Agent Desktop with Forms, Customer Portal, Process Manager, and Knowledge Management to deliver an agile and adaptive customer engagement platform geared to customers’ needs.

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Citizen Engagement: Intuitive for citizens and staff

“The six-month deployment schedule was ambitious,” says Harvey. “However, the entire team – Verint, the Council, our IT services provider, and other stakeholders – worked as one to deliver an on-time, on-budget implementation. Credit for that success is due in part to the Verint professional services group. The team was extremely professional. They understood what we were trying to achieve and worked hard to build a change culture based around our agents’ needs.”

Verint for Citizen Engagement is intuitive for both citizens and staff. Now, for example, when a citizen contacts the Council through the portal or another channel to report an incident such as illegal deposit of waste, the agent has an immediate, complete picture of the location and is able to pinpoint the problem directly on a map.

Once reported, the resident receives remediation status updates by email. If other citizens report the same problem, the innovative Verint software identifies the duplication, notifying the citizens that the incident is already being dealt with.

Benefits: Enhanced CX, increased efficiency, and powerful self-service

Verint for Citizen Engagement is transforming the Council’s approach to customer engagement – enhancing the service delivery experience, increasing efficiency, and introducing powerful and rewarding self-service. The benefits include:

Customer experience: Proactive, frequently automated communication is helping to deliver a personalized, responsive, and rewarding service experience. Other advancements, such as agents use of mapping technology to view the Council’s assets, have enabled more rapid identification and resolution of public service issues. As a result, customer satisfaction has increased from 70 to 85 percent.
Efficiency: The Verint platform eliminates manual intervention, removing the “middle office” and shifting services to responsive digital, self-service channels. In fact, the volume of residents transacting online has risen from five to 30 percent. There has also been a reduction in average handle time and more enquiries are now resolved at the first point of contact.
Time to value: By implementing the Verint solution in only six months, the Council was able to achieve a quicker return on investment.

Benefits: User experience, reporting, and compliance

User experience: Verint for Citizen Engagement is popular with agents. They like the unified approach to data, the intuitive navigation, and the clear, simple forms. Local politicians have even approached Harvey’s team about adding extra functionality, such as reporting malfunctioning traffic lights.
Reporting: The single, complete view of the customer is accelerating and streamlining reporting. Management information that took days to compile by spreadsheet is now available in a few clicks – increasing agility and improving decision making.
Compliance: The modern, integrated process management functionality within the Verint platform makes it easier for the Council to comply with current regulatory requirements, such as GDPR, and adapt to new compliance rules.

Engagement Management invaluable during COVID-19

Verint for Citizen Engagement has also been an invaluable resource to the Council during the COVID-19 pandemic. In just three weeks, the Verint professional services team worked with the Council to develop a system to support citizens shielding themselves from the virus. The Council used the single, timely view of shielding residents to manage the delivery of medication, food, and other essential items.

“We are immensely proud of our achievements in such a short time,” Harvey concludes. “This is a capital city using innovative technology to radically change and redefine its approach to service delivery – ultimately bettering the lives of the citizens of Edinburgh.”

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