Council strikes five year deal with Civica to implement new customer service platform
East Riding of Yorkshire Council has signed a five year contract with software and outsourcing company Civica to develop a new digital customer service platform, with the aim of guiding more residents towards self-service.
The platform will form part of the council’s Transforming East Riding programme, which began in 2010 and is projected to provide savings of £188 million by 2019.
It will be built on Civica’s Digital 360 platform with plans to roll it out to the council’s 330,000 residents by summer 2016. It will also provide employees with an integrated view of contact with residents and live customer intelligence.
The first group of services will be moved to the platform in the second quarter of next year. They will include: street services such as reporting defects in roads and street lighting and booking collections of bulky waste; public protection, such as reporting dog fouling, noise and pollution issues; access to council tax accounts, with the ability to make payments and apply for discounts and exemptions; and business rates services.
Reducing calls
Brigette Giles, head of resource strategy at East Riding of Yorkshire Council, said: “The new platform will make sure the infrastructure is in place to allow us to make the necessary savings and reduce the 2.7 million calls our customer service network and officers receive annually. Furthermore, it will support a much more agile workforce dealing with customers with complex enquiries.”
She added that the contract specification demands that the least digitally able will also benefit from the platform. This is reflected in it being available through self-service kiosks as well as PCs and mobile devices.
Image: Joseph L Ridgway II, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons