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eGovernment Forschung seit 2001 | eGovernment Research since 2001
Staffordshire Connects, a partnership of 10 local authorities in Staffordshire*, has transformed service performance by implementing a new customer service strategy and making key investments in Macfarlane contact centre and CRM technology.

The partnership has achieved extraordinary success in improving service delivery and access, achieving economies of scale, meeting Priority Service Outcomes and BVPI for e-Government objectives, and enhancing the reputation of Staffordshire:

  • The partnership has realised capital saving of £1.8m on products (CRM, e-Payments) procured jointly under projects funded by ODPM Local Government Online funding

  • It has realised annual revenue saving of more than £400,000 on joint maintenance and the development of shared products

  • Efficiency savings (once CRM has been developed sufficiently to enable 80 per cent of service requests to be resolved at first point of contact) are anticipated at between £750,000 and £1m per annum.

In recognition of its achievements, Staffordshire Connects was named Partnership of the Year by the Association for Public Service Excellence in 2005; and won Beacon Status in the category of 'Transforming Service Delivery through Partnerships' in 2006.

Technology-driven improvement

In 2002, Staffordshire Connects began its technology journey by setting out to procure an integrated data capture system which would achieve its vision of 'seamless service delivery" by enabling partners to accept service requests for each other and by allowing citizens to access services via all the contact channels for which consultation had revealed a demand.

Following a full competitive tendering exercise, the Partnership procured the Oracle LG45 CRM product and contracted Capula to implement the system. The CRM system, used today by nine partners, can be deployed by customer advisors receiving a service request via a telephone call, face-to-face visit or e-Form and allows them to log and track requests online.

The Staffordshire project is now one of the UK's most comprehensive local government CRM implementations. It has enabled the partnership to establish a single view of citizens who have established self- service accounts; and has a unique disaster recovery facility, with production servers at Stafford, and test, development and disaster recovery servers in Stoke-on-Trent.

Telephony

The addition of advanced contact centre telephony has been another significant factor in the partnership's success. In 2005, following a full competitive tendering exercise, Staffordshire Connects negotiated the purchase of multiple CallPlus contact centre systems from Macfarlane Telesystems and, to date, has implemented the technology within Lichfield District Council, Cannock Chase District Council and Stafford Borough Council. Stoke-on-Trent City Council was an existing CallPlus user. The CallPlus platform supports a range of applications including Multi Media Contact Centre, Interactive Voice Response, Management Statistics, Recording and Unified Communications.

The Macfarlane technology has played a key role in improving the availability of management information (on calls received, calls lost, peaks and troughs, call durations etc.), helping partners better understand the nature of call traffic and more accurately schedule the right resources to manage future demand. CallPlus automated queue messaging facilities have also been successfully used to provide service information to callers and reduce the number of calls that need to be transferred to live agents.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council has demonstrated use of the CRM and Macfarlane systems. It has developed over 100 of its current 185 services into service requests and is processing thousands of transactions each month at a first time resolution rate of over 85%. Established for around two years, and a contact centre within the Staffordshire Partnership at 100 seats, Stoke is in pole position for taking other authorities' service requests.

Sharon Dawson, Customer Strategy Manager at Stoke-on-Trent Council, commented: "The current vision is for a North Staffordshire Contact Centre with Stoke to take calls on behalf of Staffordshire Moorlands District Council and Newcastle Borough Council, out of hours initially. The capacity for shared service will also enable the facilitation of other projects that are currently being discussed (for example, County Emergency Planning and the national issue of a Pandemic Flu outbreak). With Stoke at the hub of the activity, Staffordshire has a great deal of capacity to remain at the forefront of Local Government Contact Centre service provision"

The Staffordshire Connects Broadband Network

The final part in the technology jigsaw is Staffordshire County Council's sophisticated privately-owned broadband network. The network, named by Cisco Systems in December 2004 as Internet Protocol Network of the Year, also supports:

  • A Joined-Up Directory of contact data that facilitates messaging for more than 12,000 employees within the partner organisations. Customer service advisors use the Directory to both resolve requests and to transfer customers to relevant authorities in support of the partnership's objective of achieving 80 per cent service resolution at first point of contact. The Directory saves up to 10 minutes on each search, creating an annualised efficiency saving for the partners of around £31,500.

  • A Joined-Up e-Payments solution that facilitates 24/7 payment for services via Automated Telephone Payments, manual telephone calls or access via partner websites. The solution has reduced the charge for credit card payments from 1.75 per cent to 1.19 per cent of total transaction value while the debit card charge was driven down from 20p to 15p per transaction.

Remarkable results

The customer service transformation programme has been extremely effective in:

  • Improving access to services via products accessible via voice, face-to-face and/or web channels

  • Delivering services relevant to Staffordshire and its partners

  • Establishing a single point of customer contact (enabled by deployment of CRM in one-stop shops and council offices, the availability of e-Payments on websites and the development of joint telephony solutions)

The Partnership's success has also spawned spin-off collaborations (e.g. all 10 partners have joined with two Warwickshire districts and Staffordshire Fire and Rescue to form the 'Staffordshire Plus Improvement Partnership', which secured £858,000 Government Capacity Building funding to improve performance.)

"We are extremely proud to have worked with the Staffordshire Connects partners on what has been a highly successful technology project" said Paul Skinner, Sales Director of Macfarlane Telesystems. "It's been a win-win situation for each of the member organisations and their customers."

Quelle/Source: ContactCenterWorld, 28.05.2007

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