Canterbury Council
IMPROVING SERVICE AND REDUCING WAITING TIMES
Qm Group Helps Get Council Service Centre in Line
Qm Group and Canterbury City Council Case Study
Background
For many thousands of members of the general public a local council's service centre represents the main way to access advice and guidance on public services. During a typical week a busy customer service centre can process thousands of enquiries from the public. Ensuring the right employees are available with the right expertise to deal with an enquiry, while keeping queues to a minimum is a continual headache for even the most adept of customer services managers. One organisation that has addressed this challenge head on is Canterbury City Council. In 2006, the Council deployed a solution developed by queue management specialist Qm Group. This case study looks at the challenges faced by the Council and how the Qm solution has helped them overcome the issues they faced, shorten waiting times and improve customer service.
Customer Challenges
Canterbury City Council operates a centralised customer service centre which every month handles over 12,000 customer queries concerning more than 70 different services the Council delivers. The range and diversity of the enquiries are truly staggering and extend from basic issues such as bill payment through to dealing with complex benefit queries, planning applications and providing basic information such as details on refuse collection.
Managing such a diverse range of enquiries represents a major challenge for any organisation and the Council is no exception.
Cathy Eastwood, Customer Services Manager for the Council highlights some of the challenges. "The service centre represents the first point of contact with the Council for many members of the public and it is vitally important we present a professional image from the outset. In delivering a consistently high level of service we face a number of key issues.
"Firstly, when customers arrive at the centre, we have no way of determining their requirements and their first reaction is to join a queue for service. When they get to the staff member, there is no guarantee that staff member is qualified to handle that query, meaning the customer could sometimes find themselves facing a further wait until an appropriate specialist becomes available.
"The easy way to solve this is to put your most qualified people on duty serving the public but in reality this means they spend much of their time dealing with straightforward enquiries which does not represent best use of highly skilled staff.
"Secondly, we were looking to increase the overall efficiency of our operation to allow us to minimise customer waiting times and at the same time we were keen to eliminate unnecessary queuing by providing the public with relevant information about our services at the point at which they enter our centre.
It was a combination of these factors that lead the Council to seek a solution that would enable them to match customer need to staff expertise and in so doing improve service levels and reduce the time customers wait. Importantly, the Council needed a solution capable of running on its existing Citrix network infrastructure.
The Solution
In a bid to address the issues, the Council turned to Qm Group, one of the UK's leading independent providers of queue management solutions. Qm Group already provides a range of queue management solutions to many leading organisations in the public sector including the IND (Immigration and Nationality Directorate) as well as a number of councils. The company also provides its solutions to the retail and banking sectors and current users of Qm systems include The Post Office, HSBC, Boots, Matalan and Argos.
After undertaking a detailed site survey, Qm Group identified the need to introduce a process that would filter customers according to their requirement, before matching customers with appropriately qualified staff and providing direction to an appropriate service point. At the same time Qm identified an opportunity to help reduce queues further by providing information to the public about the Council's services at the point at which queues formed.
As Cathy Eastwood points out, "In a number of cases you end up with customers queuing simply to ask relatively straightforward questions about Council services. If you can put the more commonly asked questions on digital signage or screens, you can reduce the need for some people to queue altogether.
The solution deployed by Qm Group uses a receptionist who acts as a meeter-greeter and gives customers tickets according to their query. The system then directs customers to the appropriate service point where an advisor with the skills to deal with their enquiry is based. This is achieved by programming the system's database with all employee details and their respective skills and the solution then matches resource to customer need. Customers are called forward using two 32" LCD screens which provide directional signage with an electronically generated voice providing instructions such as "ticket number two to desk number three please."
These LCD screens are also used by the Council to convey information about key services when they are not providing directional information to customers.
The delivery of content to the screens is a key element of the overall project and Qm Group worked with the Council to develop content that was both relevant, informative and entertaining to customers. The content strategy is helping the Council promote access to basic services via other routes such as online, via the telephone or by using post as an alternative way to pay bills. This approach to channel migration helps reduce the number of basic enquiries that have to be dealt with face to face. The delivery of content that combines information and entertainment acts as a distraction to customers and helps shorten the perceived time a customer waits. The delivery of content also provides guidance to customers as to the range and depth of the services available at the service centre.
A critical element of this deployment involved Qm's technical team working closely with the Council to configure the system to run over the Council's Citrix network. Citrix is installed in numerous public sector organisations and establishing the Qm solution on Citrix represented a major challenge.
Following a programme of testing and training, the system went live in late 2006.
Business Benefits
According to Cathy Eastwood, "Even though the system only went live a few months ago we are already realising the benefits on a number of levels."
As well as reducing the overall time customers wait, the installation of the system has allowed the Council to deploy its staff more effectively thus ensuring that highly qualified staff are more readily available to handle complex enquiries and the most competent customer services staff deal with more straightforward issues. It has also eliminated the situation where customers end up having queue only to discover the adviser serving them is not qualified to help.
"The introduction of the media system promoting the Council's services to customers as they are waiting allows us to make our users more aware of our services. The information service is a pivotal part of the overall system and as well as helping us inform customers of the range of services we offer, it also provides a relevant distraction to our customers and we believe this has helped shorten the perceived time that customers wait."
As well as improving customer service and reducing waiting times, the solution also provides the Council with detailed analysis of customer footfall throughout the day. A Cathy Eastwood points out, "This data is invaluable and it is already helping us to draw up staff schedules which are optimised to customer demand and like any customer focused organisation, meeting customer demand as efficiently and professionally as possible is central to everything we do."
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