Almost 70 per cent of all calls received from the public are able to record details in the system and route them directly to the right member of staff for action.
The Comino system keeps citizen information from a wide range of sources in a central database. This links with Spelthorne’s online payment and facilities booking applications, providing a fully integrated, customer-focused approach. In the first full year of use, Customer Services handled almost three times as many calls, with the same number of staff and with improved response rates. Spelthorne’s community transport service, ‘Spelride’, has reduced the average number of engaged calls from over 2,000 a month to just seven, thanks to improved call routing and changed processes enabled by Comino. Spelthorne has also benefited from using Comino to implement ‘Workflows’ for complaints and Freedom of Information (FOI) enquiries. This system ensures that customer details are logged centrally in the Comino system and automatically takes enquiries to the next stage if required. If a customer calls to find out what is happening to his or her enquiry, an officer can instantly find the most up to date information from the central system and see what has happened to their enquiry.
Richard Wilkinson, Head of Customer and e-Government Services at Spelthorne, comments, “We have been able to improve our processes and customer service delivery. In just over a year, we have registered more than 8,000 customers in Comino’s Contact Management system and recorded 15,000 work items. We are proactively moving all our departments and processes to an electronic base to improve and structure our work, reduce duplication and error, and gain a fuller picture of customer contact.
“Comino is a major strategic partner and we hope to benefit further from their expertise, with drawings for planning applications about to be made available to the public, and Records Management on the agenda. Comino will enable us to replace existing filing systems so as to manage the document lifecycle more effectively, including issues of retention and disposal and audit trails, and we shall then be able to achieve the ISO standard for Records Management,” adds Wilkinson.
Spelthorne Borough is a compact urban area, with a population of approximately 90,000 people, covering some 20 square miles. The major centres of population are Ashford, Shepperton, Staines, Stanwell and Sunbury with no physical boundaries between them. The area comprises 65% green belt and 30% of the total area is either floodplain or reservoir. The River Thames is a particular feature, forming much of the Borough boundary and the Council is working hard to secure even more public access along this length of the Thames.
Quelle: Publictechnology, 26.07.2005
