Jennifer Foreshew | June 24, 2008
case study | Canberra Connect
IF anything is guaranteed to frustrate a customer, it is being given the wrong information.
Anthony Polinelli says errors are down Picture: Kym Smith
"Someone may have called our call centre to get some advice and then proceeded to a shopfront to conduct a transaction only to realise the information they had been given wasn't accurate," Canberra Connect director Anthony Polinelli says.
"There was too much reliance on individuals knowing information in their head."
Canberra Connect is a gateway used by a number of ACT government agencies to deliver information to businesses and citizens, and to manage government-related transactions from its single call-centre and five shopfronts.
The organisation had operated a number of systems, but had no coherent overview of data across all agencies and services.
With the number of services growing, Canberra Connect needed a single knowledge foundation.
In 2005, it was expanded from its initial single-agency focus to become the public face of the majority of ACT government services.
Canberra Connect established a call centre operation and boosted counter services.
After a rigorous tender and evaluation process, RightNow Technologies was enlisted to provide a multi-channel service that used a common self-learning knowledge repository to provide reliable, uniform information over the phone, on the web, by email or in person.
Users can access information about any government service from emergency information through to garbage collection days or local library hours.
Its single call-centre has 60 staff and manages almost 1 million calls a year, and another 60 people staff the Canberra Connect shopfronts, serving between 500,000 and 600,000 citizens annually, while 20 people make up the back-office team.
"We took RightNow's service module, which basically allowed us to manage, via a set of frequently asked questions, a feedback option and an account option," Polinelli says.
The technology was installed in February 2005 and brought into service over several months. Few technology changes were needed because it is a fully hosted system, Polinelli says.
"We needed a system that allowed us to provide consistent answers and high-quality service regardless of where people came to get the information."
Canberra Connect's customer service representatives do not require training across multiple services, as all information is maintained and easily accessible from one portal.
Staff morale and training have benefited, as staff only have to interrogate the system to answer questions.
The technology allows members of the community to submit service requests to government for matters such as reporting potholes or damage to infrastructure.
"They log on and create their own account, submit the feedback, and then track it through to completion, making the process transparent," Polinelli says.
The RightNow technology has helped to rebuild many processes and assisted in streamlining and creating efficiencies by improving service quality.
In addition to its core features, modifications enable the system to log every incoming call, noting the purpose or category of the call. It provides information that agency chief executives need to access their services.
It has greatly increased the ACT Government's ability to get information out swiftly.
"Canberra Connect provides information to the community in times of emergency - floods, storms or fires - and we are able to update information across all those service channels in real time," Polinelli says.
About $1 million had been invested in RightNow in the past three or four years, he says.
This year, Canberra Connect is on target to collect $630 million for the ACT government.
"We have also deployed the same technology to other parts of government. If we are not able to deliver a service on behalf of an agency, we give the technology to them so they can deliver it themselves," Polinelli says.
The system is capable of growing as additional government agencies and services sign-up to Canberra Connect.
"Our plan over the coming years is to continue to strengthen the way the system is used, not just centrally through Canberra Connect, but also via our client agencies," Polinelli says.
THE PROBLEM
The organisation had no coherent overview of data across all agencies and services. Knowledge varied according to individual customer service representatives.
THE PROCESS
RightNow was installed to provide a multi-channel service using a common self-learning foundation.
THE RESULT
The system enables flexibility in managing content and allows information to be updated in real time. High-quality, consistent information is available to users regardless of the service channel.