When adding a full-function (3rd Party) Customer Service, or 311 system, to a Customer-facing website, Service Providers insist on consistent website branding. That's why we offer the services of our highly creative Design Specialist to assemble a widget image that blends perfectly with your existing branding, including perfect color matching, and the use of vector graphics to allow unlimited
Category: Customer ServiceCustomer Service
The Ups and Downs of 311 Centers
The initial euphoria and blind belief in the value of 311 Centers has finally worn off. The economy, better metrics, technology and Citizen feedback have contributed to the conclusion that many 311 Centers are not cost effective in their current form. The difficulties of creating an instant group of "experts" in all aspects of Local/County Governments have really surfaced. The result is a
Process Standardization. Marching in Step?
In previous posts, we examined the problem of variation in business process implementation. In this post, we will look at one of the solutions to that problem - process standardization. Please picture in your mind's eye a group of soldiers matching in step at a parade to music played by a band. What makes the variation by the marching soldiers and the band minimal? Standard work describes
Having Tried Our Groundbreaking App, Now What?
OK, so you're intrigued by the effectiveness of our best-of-breed, Public Sector, groundbreaking App; perhaps you've even taken a few seconds to make an actual Service Request or three, that we deliver for you. Now what? How do you ensure that your local Public Service Providers sit up and take notice? How do you make them realize that the old ways are obsolete, and today's technologies are
Pelham Equates Customer Service, Tax Containment
Many in the Public Service Sector still believe that providing best-in-class Customer Service always increases the costs of Service Delivery. This attitude results in attempts to offer minimal Customer Service, and trying to get away with it, by convincing elected officials that improved Customer Service will mean cuts in Services. The hope is that the electorate will swallow this argument and
Pelham Water and Wastewater Lowest Fees in Niagara Region
Congratulations to our original "launch" Customer, the Town of Pelham, Canada, for the third year in a row where water / waste-water fee increases have been kept to ZERO! In fact they are the Lowest Fees in the entire Niagara Region. For more details, please take a look at their recent Press Release on this important topic. We work with Pelham Staff, all the time, to get their feedback on
Collaborative Service Delivery (Fixing The Disconnect)
Transparency, accountability, engagement (and all those other buzz words that we perhaps overuse), have a downside - heightened Public expectations for improved Service Delivery. The Public sees, ever more clearly, that we are not being cost and resource efficient in getting this done. Collaboration as an approach to the delivery of local services, focuses on sharing costs and benefits by two or
Want to see our cascading widgets?
Imagine being able to add Customer Service functionality, configured to the topic of each of your web pages? Sounds tedious, complicated and expensive? With PSR's cascading widgets, it's none of the above. Take a look at one of our Client's website and you see how they've achieved this. You can go even further and customize each widget image to match its associated web page. The Public can get
CoPQ? What on earth is that?!?
When seeking to measure and compare the performance of employees, many public service provides often focus on efficiency measure. To illustrate, take a moment or two to ponder this hypothetical scenario: Given the same resources (time, tools, training, etc), one of the workers in your team (let's call him Bob), on average, repairs 10 potholes in a day whilst his colleague Billy repairs only 7
Hey, how are you/we doing?
When it comes to obtaining feedback on their performance, many public service providers primarily turn to those citizens who have consumed their service via customer satisfaction surveys for example. It seems to make sense – after all, who best to comment on the service than those who have experienced it directly? However that approach ignores the differences between outputs (the end results of a
Can you afford not to?
From Niyi Ogunbiyi, (Director, Change Enablers Ltd) In our previous post, we made the case that public service providers needed to do more than simply measure customer satisfaction metrics. In order to understand why customers are satisfied or otherwise, it is necessary to understand the end-to-end service delivery lifecycle and to that end we introduced the “Service Excellence Capability
Beyond Customer Service Performance Measurement…
In our last post we shared some performance measurement thoughts by Cory Fleming 311/CRM Program Director, ICMA, on local government customer services. A number of suggestions were proffered - Organizational Knowledge Tests, "Secret Shopper” Evaluations, Customer Service Innovations and Citizen Satisfaction Surveys. These suggestions are a good start, and credit must be given to public service
Customer Service Performance Measures for Sustainable Communities
From ICMA Center For Sustainable Communities (Cory Fleming 311/CRM Program Director, ICMA) This past Wednesday (November 20), I led an online discussion on “Building Customer Service into Local Government.” One participant came up with a great but challenging question – what performance measures do you use to evaluate customer service? I suggested customer surveys and comments cards, but I
