Sheffield Council Drives Savings and Improved CX with Verint for Citizen Engagement

Sheffield City Council’s migration to cloud-based Verint for Citizen Engagement is driving exceptional digital-first engagement across both assisted and self-service channels. The organization has already shifted more than 11,000 calls to self-service channels, and the council is seeing a 1-minute reduction in Average Handle Time (AHT) within 12 months, and 5% increase in First Call Resolution (FCR).

Results

  • 1 minute

    Reduced AHT by 1 minute

  • 11,000+

    More than 11,000 calls moved to self-service channels.

  • 2,500

    2,500 hours saved annually through automation.

About Sheffield Council

Sheffield City Council is the third-largest council in the UK, employing 7,000 people and providing services to 555,000 citizens across 231,950 households. It is delivering an ambitious transformation to provide better customer service experiences for its residents, businesses, and employees. Under the transformation program, called Future Sheffield, is the delivery of its digital strategy, which will enable it to become a digital council providing reliable and inclusive services to all customers via a digital route, 24 hours a day.

Sheffield City Council logo

Opportunity

The city is home to a vast array of cultures and backgrounds. Sheffield Council is committed to serving every one of their citizens and businesses with accessible and customer-centered services. The Council handles more than 1.25 million calls every year. In addition, citizens in local areas engage with the Council in person over 45,000 each year, and the Council’s web pages are viewed 7.8 million times each year.

The Council has been using an on-premises Verint for Citizen Engagement solution for almost a decade to support agile, omnichannel customer engagement.

However, this local authority recognizes the importance of continuous innovation and keeping up with changing customer demand and behavior. As the next phase of their digital transformation, the Council has migrated to Verint for Citizen Engagement in the cloud and reimagined their customer service delivery.

“This was a complex migration, carefully planned to align with the Council’s business needs and digital strategies,” explains Simon Gunnell, Operations Manager, Sheffield Council. “Among many objectives, the cloud platform needed to scale in line with increased public demand, deliver resilient, secure 24×7 service, and reduce manual effort through automation and self-service.”

Solution

Verint for Citizen Engagement in the cloud simplifies and automates the execution of Council processes driving savings, and improved citizen experiences. The many innovations include:

  • Development of an internal knowledge base based on an online form. This helps teams find information through sophisticated search and tagging.
  • Advisors can now open more than one case at a time, reducing AHT.
  • Completed complex payment integration in the Blue Badge solution. The application takes payment and orders the badge (a parking permit for people with disabilities) without any back-office checks, saving around 15 minutes across 10,000 applications per year (equivalent to 2,500 hours per year).
  • Natural language processing (NLP) shifted 11,000+ calls a year from the call center using automated services, increasing CX and freeing agents to focus on complex cases.
  • The council has recently rebuilt 160 forms using Verint. This improved all online journeys and helped reduce call center volumes. For example, an online rent balance checker reduced this inquiry from being the highest call center inquiry type to outside the top 10.
  • The council is building an online direct debit form for adult social care that integrates directly into the back-office payment solution, eliminating paper forms.

“Owing to the flexibility of the Verint solution, we are now building more consistent and connected ways of working across the Council. We are growing what works to keep delivering a better customer experience”

Simon Gunnell
Operations Manager, Sheffield Council.

Benefits

Sheffield Council’s cloud-first strategy is simultaneously driving improved citizen service, increased efficiency, and reduced cost. Key benefits include:

  • Extended agent capacity through automation: NLP moved 11,000+ calls a year from the Council call center, freeing agents to focus on complex cases. For example, when customers want to speak to their housing officer, they verbalize their postcode within the IVR and are routed directly to the housing officer, not the contact center. Customers can also log housing repairs using NLP and Dual-tone Multi Frequency (DTMF).
  • Reduced call center AHT by one minute in 12 months via process improvements and back-office integrations.
  • Increased first call resolution (FCR) by 5% by reviewing customer service knowledge base within Verint.
  • Improved call routing by reviewing inquiry type data from Verint.
  • Increased staff and customer satisfaction each quarter of the past year.
  • Substantial savings annually as a result of moving to the cloud and reducing contractual costs.
  • Increased user/staff adoption rates to ~95% in six months via interaction logs against calls.

Staff feedback so far has been highly positive. Among many feedback comments, people have said, “searching for customers is much clearer”, “the ability to update and create customers quickly is very impressive”, and “the improvements are going to save us so much time”.

Gunnell adds, “This represents a step-change in the Council’s service delivery. We have transformed the citizen experience, the user experience, and the speed with which we can report. We can integrate new services more easily and create more accessible services. It’s a system which Sheffield can be proud of.”

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