24 March 2009

Bromley aims for citizen self-serve


When Bromley looked at ways of improving customer service, it wanted a solution that simplified operations in its contact centre while meeting the particular requirements of its business processes.
 
Serving a diverse area and some 300,000 residents, the London Borough of Bromley is London’s largest borough, taking in Beckenham, Penge, Orpington, Biggin Hill and Chislehurst as well as Bromley itself.
 
The council deals with many complex issues and with some vulnerable members of the community. That said, 90 per cent of calls that come into contact centre operatives are fairly routine and not detailed service requests: citizens want to know when something opens, when can they expect something or how they go about obtaining it.
 
The contact centre required staff to be trained on a variety of back office IT systems to deal with this volume of enquiries and, at times, operatives could be expected to use up to six different systems to answer a single call. Often this resulted in duplication of information on those systems.
 
Sally Hodgson, customer contact centre manager at Bromley, explains: ‘If a customer called to report a missed bin collection they would be requested to provide up to date contact information; and if that same customer called with a parking query, again the same information would be requested.

’This was not particularly customer-focused or efficient.’
 
Bromley wanted to have a single system in place to simplify the training requirement and include the business rules and all the links into the back office systems built in.

’By doing this, we could provide a swifter and more efficient service to customers and at the same time achieve more flexibility within the contact centre,’ adds Sheila Bennett, head of customer services, communications and consultation at Bromley.
 
The council subsequently embarked on a Customer Access Programme, with the objective of improving customer satisfaction. 

After careful review of multiple CRM systems, Bromley opted for Microsoft Dynamics CRM as the backbone of its customer services and contact centre infrastructure.
 
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a generic application that operates just like Microsoft Office; it can be accessed through Microsoft Outlook, Internet Explorer and Windows Mobile.
 
Microsoft Gold Partner Optevia, an IT consultancy specialising in designing and integrating customer relationship management, was responsible for the systems design, development and deployment.
 
In addition, Optevia implemented its Local Government templates alongside Microsoft Dynamics CRM.   The templates are essentially forms with some local authority business processes behind them. For example a form to help deal with abandoned vehicles or nuisance vehicle requests.

‘It basically means you do not have to start from ground zero,’ comments Olajide Iyaniwura, programme manager at Bromley.
 
He adds: ‘By selecting the local government templates, we estimate that implementation time of the system was reduced by 40 per cent.’
 
From the outset, Bromley realised that if its CRM roll-out was to be successful then it would need to work closely with senior managers and users alike. The solution was therefore designed in collaboration with the business units across the council.
 
The council’s IT department established a core project team to work closely with all interested parties – including service managers and contact centre operatives – which looked at the processes in place and redesigned these processes and built them into the system.
 
As a result of the CRM, which was implemented in four months, Bromley is now believes it is in a stronger position to give the correct information to customers more quickly.

At an operational level, departments are also seeing improvements in the efficiency of service delivery. 

‘The waste management team and the contact centre have always had a strong relationship,’ says John Bosley, the council’s waste contracts manager.
 
‘But we have seen an improvement in the accuracy of information provided as a result of the development of the Local Government templates. We get the right information at the right time, and once that information is updated on one part of the system it is updated across the entire system. We no longer need to rely on paper copies.’
 
Since going live with a variety of services covered including environmental services, council tax, and freedom of information enquiries, Bromley has upgraded from Microsoft Dynamics CRM version 3.0 to 4.0.

In the short term, the councils will also be adding additional services such as street management and pest control and, beyond that, CRM will be brought even closer to the customer.

’In the future, and where appropriate, we want customers to self-serve on a 24 hours, 7 days a week approach,’ adds council chief executive, David Bartlett.





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