City of San Antonio Enhances Its Omnichannel User Experience with Verint
About the City of San Antonio
City governments are complex organizations that exist to serve communities, providing a wealth of information and services to community residents. If a city’s job is done right, its services are transparent – until they fail.
In San Antonio, Texas, with a population of more than 1.5 million people, SA311 (311 customer service) receives nearly one million interactions annually via multiple channels, including the call center, web portal, emails, and a mobile application.
It is part of a citywide business initiative that enhances citizen service by focusing on improved communications, data tracking and reporting, and overall service delivery performance.
Simplify, modernize, and automate Citizen Engagement
Critical to this initiative, Verint for Citizen Engagement is helping SA311 simplify, modernize, and automate citizen engagement and transform service delivery.
A case-in-point was the opportunity to move forward with new user experience (UX) initiatives as part of a Verint software upgrade that would create greater synergy between the City’s CRM system and its 311 web self-service portal presence.
The goal was to create a user experience that would enhance the City’s digital platforms, making it easier for citizens to engage with the City on the channel of their choice.
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"What we are doing is really about user experience. About more access and content through channels, devices, accessibility, language, availability, and findability. That is the UX culture we are building."
Solution: Verint for Citizen Engagement
Even though the UX initiative was introduced while a larger Verint software upgrade project was already in progress, City leadership recognized that the UX benefits would far outweigh any extra costs, rework, and delays.
Working closely with Verint, the City initiated and completed an intensive usability study with multiple departments. This included internal employee focus groups, as well as facilitated resident groups, which provided feedback regarding the City’s 311 services.
Using existing Verint for Citizen Engagement forms as a baseline to build upon, the City was able to gain deep insights from these focus groups.
Learn MoreBest Practices in UX and CX Improvement:
The City discovered several best practices to consider when embarking on a UX and customer experience improvement journey:
- Involve UX at the start: Stay customer and user focused from the very beginning to decrease rework and delays, as well as to help reduce overall cost.
- Do not get defensive or allow missed opportunities: Take outside opinions into consideration, encourage whiteboarding, raise awareness, and revitalize existing partnerships across teams.
- Stack the project team with UX pros to mitigate negative results: Ensure that the project team has the necessary UX skills to execute. Identify and empower a “UX champion” to make decisions and redirect actions.
- Make sure the primary business stakeholders are truly invested: Avoid reluctant stakeholders, as they can cause friction and don’t underestimate the effectiveness of a great demo in moving the project forward.
Benefits: A Highly User-Focused Experience
Since the successful upgrade of Verint for Citizen Engagement and launch of Verint online forms, City of San Antonio has experienced a wide range of benefits for both its operations and citizens.
The City emerged with a highly user-focused experience across the board. In addition, it was able to build and strengthen relationships across departments in the process.
Citizens can now efficiently and effectively engage and interact with SA311 via their channel of choice, whether online via mobile app or web portal, by phone via the 311 call center, or through digital channels such as social media and email.
Improved efficiency, ease of use and speed resolution
Thanks to Verint online forms, San Antonio residents can now self-report various issues – from potholes, graffiti, and traffic signal/sign maintenance to animal-related matters and trash/code concerns; through their smartphones and a variety of other devices.
Reported incidents are then logged by the City and automatically routed to relevant city departments, making it easier than ever for the City to quickly connect with constituents to streamline and speed resolution.
The new web portal allows residents to set up an account where they can track and monitor the progress of their requests.
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