Case study: Wokingham Borough Council improves communications

Wokingham Borough Council has deployed a LiveOps contact centre solution.

Communicating with citizens and businesses about issues and public services is a major responsibility for Wokingham Borough Council. In attempting to reach its diverse audience, contact centre staff spent long hours on outdated and expensive hardware which restricted them to email only.

Wokingham Borough Council faced several business challenges:

• Cumbersome, costly legacy system. The Council’s communication system relied on expensive hardware and costly voice communications.
• Diverse audiences and high volume of communication. The Council had to reach students, business owners, employees and citizens with a broad range of information about payments, housing, traffic and recycling, and other topics.

Wokingham Borough Council was looking to update their hardware, in an effort to improve their reach to an increasingly diverse audience.

Solution

The Council implemented LiveOps Social (with SMS) and LiveOps Chat & Email. The solution allows contact centre agents to easily manage multiple communications and reach audiences via the most convenient channel. Launched in just a few weeks, LiveOps Platform interfaces with CRM and voice systems to offer an easy and convenient way to communicate timely information.

As a cloud contact centre solution, the platform should save council tax payers thousands of pounds by offering lower-cost alternatives to voice communications. Equally important, it enables the Council to improve public services and communicate in using personalized texts and emails, including payment or event reminders, important notifications, general notices and information about waste and recycling, parks and open spaces, roads and highways, traffic management and planning.

Wokingham Borough Council experienced a range of benefits from LiveOps Platform:

• Cost savings. It will save the Council thousands of pounds in the coming years.
• Reduced administration. The solution provides agents with immediate access to all the information they need to answer multiple service enquiries, via multiple channels, in a single blended environment. They also have access to specific staff performance and management tools to help understand customer needs through continuous monitoring of their citizens’ requests, responses and satisfaction levels.
• Higher quality communications. It makes it easier to communicate with audiences and offers tools to ensure consistency and high standards.

Susan Law, Chief Executive of Wokingham Borough Council, said: “[LiveOps] will revolutionize the council’s customer care, whilst providing much-needed cost savings over the coming years.”