Wyre Borough Council on the Fylde coast has gone live with an Enterprise Case Management solution from Lagan which will help it to reduce avoidable contact and thus improve services to citizens as part of its wider Customer First action plan.
A key aspect of Wyre’s improvement plan is to minimise unnecessary interaction between citizens and their local authority in line with central government’s NI 14 requirements. The Lagan solution, which replaced an existing system, will help Wyre to achieve this by automatically updating customers’ history every time they contact the council, thus building an overall picture of interactions. Wyre has a large proportion of older citizens among its population of 110,000. Customer service agents will be prompted proactively to offer additional services which match the needs of the individual citizen. This could help to pre-empt potential future issues and will reduce avoidable contact by suggesting recommendations and referrals across a range of services during one single exchange.
Wyre has already re-engineered its end-to-end waste management processes within Lagan, and plans to focus on, Revenues next. There will also be emphasis on self-service through a customer portal to reduce avoidable contact – and minimise costs.
The Lagan system supports mobile working, and street scene officers are now equipped with Blackberries giving them access to immediate information regarding incidences of fly-tipping. Within days of the system going live, the team received an image of a sofa left at a bus stop in the council’s area. John Bettle, the street scene officer who handled the case, comments, “When a fly tipping report is received supported by a photograph, it gives us a good indication as to what we are about to come across. The new Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) is already making a difference to how we working, and benefiting the customer.”
Pete Mason, Head of the Contact Centre at Wyre Borough Council, explains that the decision to proceed with Lagan was taken on the basis that the company is recognised as a market leader with a well proven solution which promises a good return on investment. He comments, “One of the key issues with NI 14 is being able to identify and record what is deemed to be avoidable contact. The Lagan solution will enable us to do this automatically, eliminating manual processes which have been a huge administrative and costly burden.’’ He also praises Lagan’s support during the implementation and the effectiveness of the skills transfer programme delivered by Lagan.
“The Council is particularly pleased with the speed with which the project team have been able to configure the Lagan solution themselves. Managers and customer facing staff were involved during the scoping exercise, allowing them to experience the Lagan system first-hand. So user-friendly did the system prove, that staff were able to start logging calls with as little as 20 minutes’ training and no previous experience. “
Pete Mason concludes: “What we now have is a powerful tool which filters all of our customer information and gives us meaningful reports at all levels, which we can use to collate useful knowledge which will help us make the right decisions for our citizens. Instead of spending a lot of time collating information, we spend that time on adding value by understanding what the data is telling us and changing things.”
Wyre Borough Council is currently developing its wider programme to establish a running order for service integration to the Lagan Enterprise Case Management solution. This will involve benchmarking ‘before’ and ‘after’, allowing the council to report on tangible improvements to service delivery.