Adelaide Business Development Analyst Tony Tsaousoglou said the ‘CityChat’ service of the council portal (www.adelaidecitycouncil.com) provided a real-time online communication channel to enable direct access to staff members while the customer remains in their existing channel of preference.
“The City Chat has been of enormous benefit to our customers, particularly those who may be elderly, have a hearing impairment or who may have a physical disability,” he told FutureGov Asia Pacific.
He added: “For these customers it can be easier to write rather than talk, and CityChat adds the irreplaceable feeling of interacting with a real person which sets it apart from sending an email.”
Tsaousoglou said feedback provided by the users has been very positive. Chats received are have an average response time of 10.2 seconds and usage of CityChat continues to increase.
Adelaide was the first capital city council to use an instant messaging function in their portal.
Feedback from Council’s Customer Centre Team has highlighted a need for a CityChat service based on their experience and understanding of the difficulties experienced by non- English speaking customers.
Before adding the chat function, Tsaousoglou said the council made a comprehensive research and analysis of the systems currently available on the market to identify a fully hosted inexpensive and user-friendly solution for the residents in the city.
“Our research indicated that it was mainly large private enterprises which were using a web chat service compared to a very small number of government organisations,” he said.
The Customer Centre team has designed several “hot key” responses relating to topical issues and frequently asked questions. Hot keys enable the Customer Service Centre to provide immediate responses to the user’s questions.
Questions asked via CityChat range from simple directions and locations of services to disputing parking infringements.
In the coming months, Tsaousoglou said they will upgrade their web site to deliver better accessibility and multilingual support and to deploy mobile services enhanced by location awareness to provide focussed and timely information to all stakeholder groups.
Tsaousoglou added they are developing a range of micro-sites and online services that will serve as a central portal for all information concerning Adelaide City.
The structure of delivery will be flexible and customised to provide relevant information specific to the needs of their diverse user groups—residents , business, visitors.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Pia Rufino
Quelle/Source: futureGov, 15.02.2011
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