West Dunbartonshire Council
A One Stop Shop for Citizen-Centric
Interactions
Local council serving over 95,000 citizens and
3,000 businesses in the area
The Challenge
In 2006, the Scottish Executive initiated a program called ‘Customer First’ that supports all of Scotland’s Councils in delivering more convenient and responsive public services. The program encourages online (self-service) access to services and ensures that at least 75% of core service requests can be dealt with at the first point of contact.
In order to achieve this objective, West Dunbartonshire Council (WDC) required a solution that would help them introduce a contact center dedicated to supporting citizen needs. This would improve access to citizen information, provide a single view of each citizen, manage and report on work generated as a result of service requests and enhance the citizen experience through improved and standardized interactions.
The Solution
WDC chose Sword Ciboodle to help enhance the level of service provided to their citizens. Sword Ciboodle provides the platform that hosts all WDC business processes including council tax, benefits, housing allocations, rental accounting, housing repairs, pest control and education enquiries.
The solution provides WDC with a single view of all citizen information, provides access to full citizen contact history, and provides one centralized location to manage all council services requests. This is delivered through the contact center and in branch, known as the ‘One-Stop-Shop’. Furthermore, Sword Ciboodle allows WDC management to view and manage outstanding work with the ability to report and track the frequency of citizen queries, enabling them to continually improve the level of service for its citizens. Future phases of the implementation will see Sword Ciboodle expanding into other areas of the Council according to business needs and citizen demands.
The Results
Sword Ciboodle has enabled WDC to operate a truly integrated contact center, with the ability to easily expand the reach as and when required.
WDC are now able to resolve more enquiries at the first point of contact, improving citizen satisfaction and allowing back-office staff more time to deliver front-line services.
Benefits
- Exceeded Scottish Executive targets by dramatically increasing first contact resolution
- Reduced the overall number of complaints
- Allowed staff to be redeployed from back office to front line
Solution Highlights
- Users: 40 contact center, branch and back office
- Channels: telephone, white mail, fax, email, web and branch
- Processes include: council tax, benefits, housing allocations, rental accounting, housing repairs, pest control and education enquiries
- Integration: Saffron, a council housing application and i-World a revenue and benefits application
Sword Ciboodle enabled us to vastly increase the number of enquiries that are resolved
at first contact, thereby greatly improving the level of service that we provide to our citizens