Bringing clarity and visibility to council's customer comms

"Since implementing Datascape CRM we have had significant changes in business process – now all customer enquiries are sent to staff via a service request and there are no longer emails sent around council," says Western Bay of Plenty (WBOP) District Council CIO Marion Dowd.

It used to be a 'wishlist' item, but now the WBOP District Council team has a streamlined system that sees email queries being converted to service requests that are then sent to staff to action.

As well as reducing some of the double handling of the previous system where emails were triaged and then forwarded to different council departments, the system also significantly increases visibility of customer interactions.

"We are continuing to reduce the number of separate inboxes and instead channelling them to the central email address info@westernbay.govt.nz and all website forms are now being redirected to staff via service requests. As a result, there has been a significant 90% increase in visibility of customer interactions." 

"Staff have found the system easy to use. Their enthusiasm has grown following council-wide training and the provision of customised training manuals. With all the information being tailored to their roles, they were able to recognise the practical use of the system for their day-to-day."

This council team has previously worked with Datacom on a number of projects, including rolling out the Antenno app to support timely, relevant communication to and from its residents.

For the people that the council team serves, the greater level of visibility offered by implementing Datascape CRM also means better communication and accountability.

"[Service requests] are being monitored on a weekly basis to ensure that agreed timeframes are being kept. Customer updates are being made to service requests too, enabling the customer service team the ability to update customers if they call back."

There have also been some unexpected benefits – Datascape CRM allows users to create tags that then create a searchable link across different service requests. During severe weather events, including Cyclone Gabrielle, this has allowed the team to view live data on jobs, displayed on a map, as they were being logged by the call centre team to get a real-time understanding of the scale of damage and the resource needed to address it.

The enthusiasm for the CRM's functionality and what it is helping the council achieve is perhaps best illustrated by its uptake: 98% of the organisation is now actively using CRM for the capture and management of all customer enquiries.