Citizens and customers of Townsville City Council will soon enjoy better quality and quicker response times to their questions through a deal signed this week between Townsville and IMC Communications to implement livepro®, a cloud-based knowledge management solution.
Executive Manager Customer Service Megan Leavy headed up the search for a system to help the customer support team to provide accurate and quick responses to questions ranging from, ‘what night is garbage night?’ through to survival information in natural disasters.
“We had moved from a word processing based document system to a free shareware product and then to SharePoint, but the searching still remained chunky,” she said.
“We wanted to track who’s read what and importantly, who understands it. Our needs were specific, and we chose livepro®, as it was the only product on the market that gave us what we wanted.
“The time it takes to get our staff ‘job ready’ when new or after leave will also be dramatically reduced. Therefore, our customers should expect a faster response, consistent answers, and reduced time on hold as our team look up or check information. Our sums show we’ll achieve multiple cost savings through reduced handling times, reduced Call Centre staff turnover, reduced risk of stress and reduced costs associated with storage and archiving of emails.” said Ms Leavy.
The ability to update multiple users simultaneously will help Townsville manage emergency responses.
“During Cyclone Yasi, our disaster recovery strategy was supported by LGAQ call centre in Ipswich.
However, the nature and speed of the cyclone’s approach meant we needed to quickly supply the Ipswich team with information on how to handle the calls.
Next time, with livepro®, we’ll be prepared; able to update information and for it to reach people in real time. This will help save lives,” she said.
Megan Leavy hopes to leverage their livepro® Knowledge Management experience to benefit other councils.
“Much of what we do will be similar to our peers. We’ll be able to share that information with other Queensland councils.”
