Top 3 must-have tools for UK Councils in 2017

Transforming local government with digital strategy services!

UK councils have come a long way dealing with substantial challenges and severe conditions. The sticky situation for the councils to increase citizen satisfaction with a decreasing spending power has raised the need to redesign their existing methods. The austerity of budget cuts is a big hurdle for the local councils in delivering service excellence.

As estimated by UK public spending, UK local authority spending will total about £173 billion in FY 2017.

There have been various measures taken by the councils across the UK to implement bridge the budget gap and overcome these obstacles. Renegotiating the citizen expectations, seeking the help of other organisations and agencies, working in partnerships reducing the range of services, focusing on income generation, and utilising modern software tools are few of the many policies adopted to meet fiscal challenges for transforming local government.

2017 seems to be the year of technology with the advent and wide availability of cloud-based SaaS service delivery models. Since these software solutions offer flexibility in pricing and do not demand any specialised hardware, they seem to be a perfect fit for the councils looking forward to new and innovative conducts. 

1. Digital Platform for Workforce

To function well and establish a harmonious bond with citizens, it is inescapable to authorise and equip the council employees with digital enablement. Restructuring the administration and movement of employees for maximum efficiency leads to the use of right software having:

Smart Scheduling

The main hurdle of sorting workload distribution evenly among field operatives is achieved successfully with service management platform. Mobile worker enables receiving service request details on the application itself as submitted by the citizens. Moreover, it is an economical move that lets the field employees spend more time completing the tasks, fix the issues in their first visit & increase the service delivery rate.   

Real-time Tracking

The council back-office team is able to monitor the field team and connect with them at any point of time. Mobile worker exploits the GPS functionality by setting the most optimised path with auto-routing features to align all their tasks of the day. It gives the benefits of reducing fuel and paper costs, journey time and any instant service request can be allocated to the nearby worker through the application.  

Offline Integration

Mobile worker frees the service fulfilment teams from round trips to main council office to collect their work orders. One of the advanced features is the offline integration of the information collected and updated by them whilst they are in the field. Even in the absence of the network, they can complete their tasks and update the same on the mobile worker application that is later synchronised with the system.

2. Managing Contact Centre for Communication 

Citizen interactions and complaints are the opportunities for betterment. A well-managed contact centre streamlines the operations and management of all communication points and helps the council executives by having-

Multi-channel synchronisation

With an exponential increase in the availability of different mediums to express issues, it has slowly become a mandate for public sector councils to adopt a solution that helps them to collate silos of information. A cloud contact centre solution centralises and manages all incoming telephony calls, social media tweets and posts, in-person visits, emails, fax, and self-service request submissions against every citizen for a timely action and response.

Customised reports

With the present economic conditions, analysing issues and preventing the recurrence seems to be a cost-effective way. Contact centre facilitates customised report generation based on various parameters to get an insight on common problems and give an aid to decision-making. It presents a fair idea on the basis of all interactions and data collected over the period of time for transforming local government.

Knowledge base

It’s all about the game of sharing answers! A rich knowledge base is a perfect tool to reduce direct calls, enable users solve their issues at their own and minimise the dependency and need of having more executives to handle citizen concerns. With the support of guided tutorials, videos, step-by-step instructions and documents, end-users get a clear picture of what is to be done and also, the agents know what to answer in case of queries.

Task allocation

As important as it is to expedite citizens submitting their service requests, so is the responsibility to act and solve it. Contact centre provides a way to collect all the information and directly assign the tasks to relevant teams. Also, the tasks can be allocated based on the priority with a check on service level agreement parameters. All relevant requests and cases can be linked to maintaining the precise history and give a 360-degree view of data.

3. Citizen Engagement and Participation 

Citizens are the heart of the council bodies! UK councils have been spending towards the welfare, healthcare, education and protection of their citizens to meet their expectations. With the technology taking over everything, self-service apps have been appreciated by the citizens as they are a medium to-

Connect

Citizen Participation is highly anticipated for a cordial relationship. It is very important to hear and act on their views. Dedicated platforms like My Council Services are designed to engage the citizens at every stage, enabling them contact the councillors, book public amenities and be notified of the latest happenings and announcements. The native council application and online web portal serve as a perfect interface to connect citizens and councils.

Payment

Transforming local government digitally should include mobile apps and web platform with an online payment facility that are fully functional and secure. It is becoming a common practice to carry out online transactions as it gives you the desired ease and convenience. For council taxes, service payments, and other transactions, the self-service citizen platform empowers citizens to do the things smoothly and safely.  

Reporting Issues

Self-service mobile applications are a boon for the citizens to enjoy the handiness of reporting problems and submitting service requests from their smartphones, tablets and computer systems. With features like address picker, media files and document attachment, and user-friendly forms, it simply takes few seconds to send a service request with accurate location details and evidence. Moreover, the status of these requests can be checked from their profile on the application anytime.  

Many changes are expected in the near future owing to multiple factors and citizen expectations. In such a scenario, it is a wise move to strategise the plans in well advance with the help of technology and proper consultation. Explore our solutions dedicated to transforming local government with a free demo and experience digital working and maintaining citizen relationships. Stay tuned to our social profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and LinkedIn for more updates.

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iTouchVision is one of the world’s leading cloud-based service provider with innovation & excellence at its base. The company has made its presence in all business verticals with its technical & operational capabilities to enhance the working of private & public sector organisations. Our products, ranging from Web-based software to Mobile applications have made their mark globally to transform the way work is completed.