Govtech Customer Story

Embracing Digital Change

Improving service offerings and prioritising those in need, in pursuit of its Digital First customer strategy.

The challenge

Salford City Council are pursuing a ‘Digital Salford’ ambition, a central theme of which is their ‘Digital First’ customer strategy. Against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving technological world and continuing budgetary pressures, the council aims to improve customer service and target and prioritise services to those who need them the most.

In pursuit of this strategy, the council’s Revenues service identified operational challenges that needed to be addressed. The council wanted to:

  • Clear a persistent backlog of work
  • Improve recovery rates
  • Improve the service for all customers
  • Free up as many staff resources as possible to focus on complex cases.
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“Working with Govtech was incredibly easy. Govtech understood our questions and issues, which is not always the case with other suppliers. It felt like one project team, and post project launch, they remain incredibly supportive.”

Sue Virgin

Revenues Operations Manager, Salford City Council

The solution

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“Working with Govtech has been a pleasure. They are collaborative, and there are no hidden surprises. What Govtech promised, they delivered.”

Sue Virgin

Revenues Operations Manager, Salford City Council

The result

  • The Revenues service now receives over 4,000 transactions through webCAPTURE each month, of which 2,000 don’t reach a member of staff at all, as they are fully automated
  • Simple changes and direct debit transactions are performing at levels close to 100%, with very little manual intervention needed
  • Salford’s business rules trigger interventions, these are automatically classified as high, medium or low priorities and sent to work queues with notes to aid officers, so resources are focused on more complex cases
  • Up to 100% full automation of simple CT changes, meaning that requests are dealt with quicker and without needing human intervention
  • >50% improvement in staff productivity – providing capacity to focus on more meaningful work.
Recognition for digital ambition

The council’s progress has also been recognised nationally, with Salford being awarded both ‘Digital Council of the Year’ and ‘Overall Digital Leaders 100 Winner’ at the Digital Leaders 100 awards in June 2018. A tremendous accolade, but the council isn’t content to sit still; instead, it’s looking ahead to further improve its customer offering.

Continuous digital improvement

Working with Govtech, Salford adopted an early pilot of Single Person Discount reviews, which rapidly showed a financial benefit. The team also have plans to better manage the high volume of student and landlord transactions and by constantly reviewing their online offer, they are looking at greater integration with other systems so that the customer journey is quicker, easier and better.

Impact

4,000

online queries per month in the first year

>50%

require no manual intervention

100%

automation for simple CT changes

Automate your processes. Quickly.

See results within the first months

Govtech See it in action

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