Customers
311 Minneapolis
There was a time when Minneapolis’ 400,000 citizens had to navigate 200 different phone numbers before identifying which to dial for a specific city service. Every day over 16,000 calls came into the city and over 1,400 of these calls were abandoned by callers on a daily basis. Citizen requests for service were cumbersome to track, and determining the status of a request was challenging. Resident “satisfaction surveys” commissioned by the city showed that 25 percent of residents who called city departments to obtain information or request assistance expressed dissatisfaction in getting to the appropriate person to address their request.
In response to this feedback from citizens, the City of Minneapolis decided to research 311 call center successes, as seen in other regions, by searching initially for “work order management systems” and ultimately discovering Citizen Relationship Management (CRM) software along the way. The city’s objective for a new system was to track citizen requests and establish a management accountability tool for citizen follow up and measurement of departmental effectiveness.
Solution
After several months of implementation and consultation, the city launched Lagan 311™ in January 2006. Lagan 311 is hosted at the Unisys outsourcing service center in Eagan, Minnesota and the 20+ person call center is located near
downtown in the Minneapolis Police Department’s 3rd Precinct. As part of the implementation, Lagan provided on-site software training for call center agents at their new state-of-the-art call center.
The City of Minneapolis deployed Lagan’s 311 solution across all of the city’s 16 departments and launched the call center to the public on January 4, 2006. The consolidated city call center provides a centralized location for Minneapolis residents to call regarding any type of city department request, including Public Works, Regulatory Services, Community Planning and Economic Development, Animal Control, Police, Fire and Human Resources. More than 150 different service request types were created in the Lagan solution in order to facilitate requests and questions pertaining to their various departments. Seventeen of these service request types are available via self-service on the website.
Now live and fully operational, the Lagan 311 system allows citizens in Minneapolis to choose their preferential communication channel-telephone, face-to-face, email, internet, fax-to directly interact with the city. The solution creates a detailed interaction history for every contact, including key milestones tracked by agency-defined service level agreements, to provide a clear escalation path and improved agency responsiveness and accountability.
ADP
Automatic Data Processing, Inc (ADP), one of the largest providers of computerised transaction processing and information-based business solutions, had over 42,000 staff and a turnover in excess of $8.5 billion when it acquired the highly respected Kerridge Computer Company at the end of 2005.
Kerridge was long established in the supply of fully integrated systems to the automotive sector. The acquisition resulted in a combined organisation with a worldclass range of software products, and Kerridge’s international offices filled the gap in countries where previously ADP had little or no presence.
Following the acquisition ADP was able to merge Kerridge’s Autoline software solutions alongside its own layered applications, including CRM, ecommerce and business intelligence, giving rise to a new generation of highly sophisticated and configurable systems for dealers, dealer groups, fleet and contract hire companies, vehicle importers and distributors.
Before the two groups merged, Kerridge was already a client of Knowledge Powered Solutions (KPS) and using an early version of what has evolved into the Universal system. The system was used to provide hardware support to automotive dealers from its Bristol branch and software support from Hungerford. The knowledge base that had been built at the two branches was already extensive. After the merger, the newly expanded ADP group recognised a requirement for a knowledge management system as part of its automotive solution. The KPS system was reviewed by ADP who saw it was already working well in a support environment and that, in its existing form, it fulfilled around 60% of the group’s needs. ADP discussed their requirements with the KPS team and, although considerable work was needed, they felt confident that the knowledge base could be integrated and linked to the ADP helpdesk application.
Canterbury Christ Church University
Canterbury Christchurch University in Kent is home to 16,700 students across 5 locations, Canterbury, Broadstairs, Medway, Folkestone and Tunbridge Wells.
In order to provide visitors to the website with an easy way to find the information they needed the University selected the KPS Knowledge Management solution to aid students visiting the “i-zone”.
The technology has been so successful, it is now planned to roll out KPS to many other areas including the internal systems for Students (Student NET) and for 1,334 Staff (StaffNET).
East Dumbartonshire Council
East Dunbartonshire Council has extended its existing Lagan Enterprise Case Management solution with Lagan Knowledge, an intelligent search system that is transforming the service to citizens delivered by front line staff, enabling them to respond quickly to a greater range of enquiries at the first point of contact, and reducing the volume of avoidable contact - with minimal training.
Transforming Government
Lagan’s Enterprise Case Management (ECM) and Knowledge solution form part of East Dunbartonshire’s response to the Scottish Executive’s Modernising Agenda, which aims to transform the quality and effectiveness of local government throughout the country. As Ellen Beattie, Project Manager with the Council’s Business Change Team explains, “Citizen service is now at the core of local government. The goal is to provide a choice of access channels, and the same service experience irrespective of how customers get in touch with us, whether it is via telephone, web or walk in service centre.”
East of England Development Agency
East of England Development Agency (EEDA) based in England is a Regional Development Agency and supports over 100,000 businesses each year by providing high-quality support, information, advice and funding.
In 2007, as part of the reorganisation and regionalisation of the East of England’s Business Link services, EEDA implemented a central CRM system replacing the existing disparate CRM systems and processes held within each of the six Business Links, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire.
Universal from KPS was selected as the core Knowledge Management solution that is tightly integrated with the CRM system that enable over 150 agents to be able to answer queries from businesses more effectively, promptly and accurately.
Jody Chatterjee, Executive Director - Enterprise, EEDA, said: “The transition to a regional Business Link service delivered by a single organisation will significantly improve the quality of support services across the region. The central system will ensure better interaction between the public sector and local business through a single Business Link customer contact centre and more joined-up working with partners such as the LSC. Ultimately it will help EEDA to continue to drive sustainable economic growth and regeneration in the East of England.”
Greggs
Greggs is the UK’s leading retail baker specialising in sandwiches, savouries and all sorts of other baker-fresh food on-the-go. From 1 shop and 7 vans in Newcastle in 1964, Greggs now has over 1,400 shops across the UK.
In 2010, Greggs decided to centralise all IT support for their 1,400 branches as well as the Head Office in Newcastle and required a Knowledge Management solution to improve Service Desk Agent efficiency.
“When we initially saw Universal Knowledge we thought it would a great benefit to our business. After only 2 days of implementation, we rolled out the system to our Service Desk. The system is now core to aiding our Service Desk Agents that support our 1,400 branches”
IT Support Manager
Greggs plc
Steria
Steria is a French-owned organisation that designs, develops and delivers call management solutions for companies, government bodies and public authorities.
The company has customers throughout the UK and Europe and their UK headquarters are located in Hemel Hempstead. With revenues of 1.2 billion and more than 9,300 employees across 12 European countries, Steria is among the top ten European IT services companies providing over 35 years experience of consultancy, systems integration and managed services to its customers.
In 2003 Nick Walsh, Service Management Consultant for Steria, recognised the need to gather all the knowledge that was around the company into one central resource so that it could then be accessed and distributed more efficiently to their customers. “Our objective was to increase the number of calls we could handle, and reduce the amount of time spent on each call, without having to either increase the number of operators taking the calls or reduce the quality of service to our customers” said Nick. “Our aim was to improve the customer experience by giving them the best quality and most relevant information within the shortest possible time. The most effective way of doing this was to ensure that more calls could be resolved at the first point of contact, without escalating calls to different departments. To do this, we needed our operators to be empowered with information.”
Transport for London
Every day 30 million journeys are taken in Greater London - by bus, tube, car and bicycle. The organisation responsible for overseeing this complex transport system is Transport for London (TfL). Created in 2000, the primary role of TfL - which, since 2003, has also included London Underground - is to implement the Mayor of London’s Transport Strategy and manage transport services across the Capital.
Wokingham Borough Council
Wokingham Borough Council chooses self-service web solution from Knowledge Powered Solutions to support its Customer First programme.
Citizens can quickly and easily find answers to their questions on the Council’s website using the sites updated information access solution. As part of Wokingham Borough Council’s overarching Customer First programme, they identified a need to update the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) content on their website. After careful consideration the Council selected Universal Knowledge from Knowledge Powered Solutions (KPS) - a Knowledge Management tool featuring intelligent search, expert escalation and content and document management features.
The enhanced solution from KPS has enabled citizens to quickly and easily find answers their questions via Universal’s excellent self-service feature on the Wokingham Borough Council website. This has resulted in the number of inbound calls to the council’s call centre being greatly reduced thereby allowing call centre staff to focus their time on helping citizens with more complex queries.
