Baldwin County, Alabama, located along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and Mobile Bay, has
a population of over 200,000 residents as of the 2020 Census and is in the top 10 fastest growing
metropolitan areas in the United States. Ten years older than the State of Alabama, Baldwin County remains Alabama’s largest county, covering over 1,600 square miles.

The mission of the Baldwin County Commission is to provide customer focused services to people who live, work and visit Baldwin County so they can enjoy a safe and thriving community and experience our unique heritage and natural resources. The Citizen Service Center offers services ranging from assisting callers and providing information for our courts and probate to waste management, parks and recreation and building permits.

Baldwin County have been using Universal Knowledge from Knowledge Powered Solutions
(KPS), for over 13 years, having initially implemented the KPS solution as part of a wider CRM rollout. Now in its 14th successful year, Baldwin County Commission recently upgraded to the KPS flagship Knowledge Management Solutions (KMS), which provides a highly configurable interface and additional collaboration features.

Customer Service Advisors use the KMS to provide advice and guidance to citizens, businesses and visitors using a wide variety of content types including information from the Baldwin County
Commission website, Knowledge Items directly authored and managed within the KMS, uploaded
documents and decision trees. The KMS provides a single unified platform for advisors to access all required information, using advanced search and browse capabilities.

Decision Trees are used to map complex processes for court proceedings, social service agencies, and license applications to name but a few and are widely used by advisors to quickly step through a set of questions and answers in a simplified manner. The Baldwin County Commission also widely use the collaboration features of Universal Knowledge. From hot topics to required
reading notifications, the KMS provides a dashboard view to advisors of the most important information they are required to be aware of, including any requests for changes or additions to the KMS.

Baldwin County’s ‘How Do I?’ section on their website is powered by Universal Knowledge.
A citizen can simply ask their question using natural language and Universal Knowledge will
return the most relevant results. This benefits the citizen by quickly providing the correct
information and benefits the contact centre, as they are able to both see which questions
are being asked via their self-service portal and whether they are being resolved by the
knowledge base.

It is the flexibility of the design of the KMS which makes the process of providing information to citizens so simple, with the ability to segregate information for internal and external use, with a single article being managed at the backend as each section of a Knowledge Item can have different rights and roles assigned.

‘In emergency situations the KPS KM tool is vital for our operations. When we experienced major hurricanes in 2020, we had to rotate staff in from other departments to support our 24/7 operations. The KPS KM tool is intuitive and these staff members, previously not used to the KMS were able to provide critical information to citizens without delay. Had we not had the KPS KM tool at the time, I’m really not sure how we would have coped with the demand’

‘KPS is a very responsive supplier who works closely with us to ensure the KMS meets our needs today and in the future’

Shannon Spivey
Customer Relationship Manager at Baldwin County Commission

By joining G-Cloud KPS offers enhanced value for UK Central and Local Government service delivery. The KPS G-Cloud Knowledge Management Software can be used across public sector services such as Health, Emergency Services and Education as well as for IT Service Management delivery across any public and not-for-profit organisation.

G-Cloud is Fully EU Compliant

The KPS G-Cloud solution is EU compliant providing access to knowledge management software at reduced time and cost for implementation and ongoing operation. Investing in improved technology allows public sector organisations to enhance service quality while reducing cost of delivery. With G-Cloud the implementation is simpler and requiring less up-front investment.

G-Cloud for Public Sector, Central and Local Government, Not-For-Profit

The Crown Commercial Service Supplier framework and G-Cloud is available to a wide range of organisations.  Key to the framework is that it will help CSS deliver savings for Government Organisations by identifying and selecting best value solutions. KPS is committed to the framework and to the support of improved service delivery for public sector organisations.

KPS knowledge management software is supporting public sector service delivery working with organisations in Health, Emergency Services, Local Government and Education. Knowledge Base Software enables effective delivery of information based services to internal and external customers and users.

Unfortunately the Lack of Trust and Poor Customers Services experiences can often link these two different sectors.

Lack of Trust & Poor Customer Service brings these sectors together

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody that the level of trust in the financial services sector has declined immensely, this is particularly true of the Banking Sector.  Trust or trustworthiness is probably the single most important business asset a company has, especially today when there’s an accelerating pace of technical change, innovation, and economic turbulence.

Pressure to Improve Quality of Service

On top of that, there’s a tremendous increase in the power of social media and word of mouth and how that’s all feeding into the reputation economy. Local councils are also under pressure from Citizens for continually cutting services, particularly from front line services.  When front line services are squeezed so does the reputation that comes with a decline in service level offerings.  Being able to offer good services and having a good service level reputation helps to build trust.

Steps Financial Institutions can take to Rebuild Trust with Customers

There are two requirements for earning trust: intention and competence.  If I’m going to trust you, I have to view your intention as good; that you’re acting in my best interest.  I also have to view you as having the competence to carry this out.  If you have the best intentions in the world but you’re not competent enough for me to trust that you’ll execute well to deliver, then I surely will not get a positive customer experience.

Improving Service Agent Competence – A Matter of Knowledge

Competency and capability in service delivery is intrinsically linked to the knowledge made available to the service agent.  Relying on experienced agents with deep and rich experience is not always possible. Hence, a well organised and segmented knowledge base is a key tool for enhancing service delivery.  One way to achieve this quickly and efficiently is to introduce knowledge management solutions to index and organise existing knowledge at source.  This helps making relevant knowledge available to service agents in ways that ensures ongoing improvements in coverage and usability.

If you want to find out more about our knowledge management software, please contact us >>

NCC Group Escrow Management Solution

We are working with NCC Group, a leading provider of Escrow Solutions, to offer our customers the peace of mind of an Escrow Solution. An Escrow Solution is a specialised form of assurance, where any business critical application or material can be securely deposited with NCC Group.

We offer this facility in order to demonstrate both our commitment to corporate governance best practice and to building long term relationships with our customers.

More about NCC Group >>