Case Study: BookingBug for Lambeth Council
Posted on March 24, 2017 by Chad Duggan & Mike Pascoe
Digital Transformation has been a buzzword in local government for a number of years. Now that projects are being rolled out, we are starting to see how councils are delivering real value from digitally-enabled services.
Background
The digital-first movement was born from rapid changes in customer expectations. In Great Britain, 82% of adults use the internet daily, 70% of whom do so via their mobile. People are accustomed to accessing information and services on the internet instantly, and now expect that level of instant gratification from their council services.
Digital Transformation programmes have already proven beneficial to councils by helping to reduce operational costs, develop new revenue streams, improve staff engagement and drive better customer satisfaction.
This is largely driven by the way that good digital services pull demand away from the contact centres by providing customers with high-quality mobile access to services.
To help Lambeth Council implement their digital strategy, we introduced BookingBug, an online booking system that would digitise their services, reduce their overhead costs and improve customer satisfaction levels.
To demonstrate the benefits of BookingBug, we worked with transformation teams at Lambeth Council to run a pilot project for one of their services: the Nationality Checking Service (NCS).
Challenge
Prior to this project, it was only possible to book an NCS appointment over the phone. The call involved a series of questions with an average duration of 30 minutes. This process was deemed unsuitable for the modern customer.
This approach limited Lambeth’s visibility of demand for this service, making it difficult to understand how resource should be allocated. In addition to this, the manpower required to take telephone bookings meant the service could only be provided for 2 days a week.
Solution
We followed an Agile project approach when introducing BookingBug. This included initial meetings to plan requirements, workshops with stakeholders and integration testing with existing systems, e.g. customer portals and e-payment solutions.
It was important to work closely with the team to build the customer journey together. This meant that when the project was completed, it would be well-integrated and considered ‘business as usual’.
BookingBug allowed customers to book NCS appointments online through a mobile-responsive calendar that showed availability in realtime. The new digital service automates the process of updating customer data, enables online payments, schedules appointments, and manages notifications to both the customer and the NCS team. The user interface was customised to match the branding and service style of Lambeth Council to create a seamless and professional customer journey.
Benefits
More appointments
Almost twice as many appointments can be carried out, now that the time required to take telephone bookings has dramatically decreased.
Greater visibility
Better visibility of appointment trends means Lambeth Council can now understand which days are best to offer the service, and can resource more efficiently as a result.
Reduced costs
Neil Fenton, Head of Service at Lambeth Council found that BookingBug enabled them to reallocate staff from taking telephone calls to more customer facing activities. This change helped reduce appointment times and costs
as a result.
Better experience
Most notably, customer and employee experience has shown great improvement. Employees now spend more time delivering the service and less time on telephone calls. Customers also have a better experience because they have the flexibility to control the date and time of their own appointment and can access the booking service at any time.
With an expected 18 month payback period for this successful pilot, Lambeth Council are looking to introduce booking capabilities across other mainstream council services, continuing to improve customer experience and reduce costs.
