Client Case Study and Borough Council slash call volumes by 50% with new self-service platform

A suite of self-serve, case management, booking, and live chat tools has helped Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council revolutionise its customer service and boost back-office efficiency.

Stretching 274 square miles from to the shores of Lough in , Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council provides services to over 142,000 residents. In addition, it has its sights on becoming the most digitally advanced Council in Northern Ireland.

“Working with GOSS has meant we’re so much closer to achieving our target.”

Caroline Douglas - Transformation Manager Antrim & Newtownabbey Borough Council Project at a Glance

6,700 unique users Year-on-year call Integration with Significant registered in the first volumes cut by over ESRI’s ArcGIS, GOV. efficiency savings for six months. 53%. UK Pay and Notify. staff and customers.

The Challenge customers with automated replies about seasonal tree cutting procedures. This has enabled the parks services team to reduce Whilst Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough the time spent using similar email content to Council’s previous CRM was once fit for respond to separate customers queries. purpose, their ambition for self-service and back-end website integration had become more and more prevalent. The customer relations team spent much of its time manually The Results entering customer requests, and in the case of environmental health issues this could take up Within six months of going live, the Council’s to 30 mins, creating a high cost per transaction bulky waste service had attracted 6,700 and lengthy customer experience. registered users. To support the platform’s development, the Council also ran a formal These inefficient processes meant that simple user testing programme, made up of tasks like bulky waste collection requests were members of the public providing an impartial a significant time-sink for employees and assessment of council services. “We wanted residents. A flexible solution built using real-life easy-to-design forms and complete end-to- user journeys, which could automate customer end services for our customers. I can safely queries, to reduce manual data entry and call say we’ve achieved this and so much more. In times was required. fact, our case management tool has exceeded expectations, it’s so user-friendly and we can deploy new forms in no time at all”, says Caroline Douglas, Transformation Manager, The Solution Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council.

After researching a range of vendors using Before working with GOSS, most of the the GOV.UK Digital Marketplace G-Cloud Council’s customer queries came in by framework, Antrim and Newtownabbey telephone or email. Early analysis now shows Borough Council selected GOSS as its self- this has now dropped by over 50%. Caroline service provider. With no in-house developers, explains the effect this has had on the Council, the Council needed a no-code platform that “By automating repetitive data entry processes allowed users to build case management forms that used to be carried out by our team, we’ve with no prior coding experience. Before GOSS freed up countless hours which are now being deployed the platform, Council employees spent on more valuable and innovative tasks. received three days training on the platform, as Even our operational staff will receive map well as on-going support – empowering them views of their jobs, including colour coded tasks to hit the ground running from day one. to show high priority jobs”.

The new platform has also come with “Our aim is to boost overall customer integrated email capabilities, which mean the satisfaction by using technology to increase team can even tailor its communications with accessibility to information and services”, says customers depending on the time of year. For Caroline. “Working with GOSS has meant we’re example, parks services are now able to answer so much closer to achieving our target.”

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