X Series Enriches Customer Experience at the Heart of Public Sector Transformation
Aylesbury Vale District Council provides public services to over 180,000 residents in the towns and rolling countryside of north Buckinghamshire. But this local authority is anything but 'sleepy'. Rather, it's been at the leading edge of a transformation in the way services are delivered by local authorities in the UK.
Faced with 74% reductions in government grants over 10 years, the council decided to rethink its operations and embrace tech disruption, looking for innovative ways to create value and engage citizens. It became the first council to move all IT systems to Amazon Web Services, saving on infrastructure, software and staffing. Close to 60,000 of the district’s 75,000 households have signed up for its award-winning Aylesbury Vale “MyAccount” service which enables residents to access council services online. This alone has freed up more than 900 staff hours and made thousands of residents instantly reachable.
Aylesbury Vale's 10-year strategy was to move all applications off premise and into the cloud—making the council 'infrastructure free.' Telephony was next on the list. Around 75 staff members handled calls about council tax, benefits, waste collection and other topics. But the legacy telephony system was unstable, complex and costly to upgrade and maintain. It had other drawbacks too: It relied on physical handsets that kept users deskbound; it lacked reports and meaningful metrics such as calls taken and agent performance; and conference calls were via an 0844 number that was expensive for people dialing in.
"For us, the customer experience is everything— and the old telephony technology couldn't deliver," explains Andrew Grant, the council's chief executive.
8x8 met the council's needs with its flagship product, the 8x8 X Series. This ground-breaking platform provides two essential components. The Virtual Contact Centre is now used by customer relationship teams to handle inbound inquiries more effectively. Meanwhile, the Virtual Office provides phone numbers that can be used by every staff member at council offices and by home workers. The council can also run auto attendants, call queues, ring groups, call pick up groups and conference calling through the system.
"We've developed the solution and added more features over time," explains Andrew Grant. "All our agents and staff use it now, and we have the 8x8 app on our mobile phones. We now have customer journey mapping enabled, so it's possible to open customer cases on the screen before answering the call, which helps us to improve the customer experience dramatically."
8x8 successfully moved a 400 user phone system (including eight contact centres) to a hosted voice system over a weekend without loss of communication. The solution was then upgraded in 2018 during election time, also with minimal downtime. In fact, integration with the council's CRM took just two hours. Taken as a whole, the X Series implementation was finished two years ahead of schedule.
Business transformation: The flexible and granular nature of the 8x8 solution has underpinned the council's move to replace departments and their associated silos and hierarchy ‘steps’ within the organisation. Instead, there's now a single fulfillment group of multi-tasking employees, built around the needs of customers.
Significant savings: The X Series has contributed to a 10% reduction in headcount over the past two years and played a vital role in the net benefit of £20m to the council from overall savings and new income generated over the past 10 years. Automation within the telephone system is saving £40,000 a year, while the X Series has contributed to a 30% reduction in overall IT spend.
New revenue streams: The X Series adds extra communications capabilities to the MyAccount channel where residents can purchase a range of paid-for services, such as green waste collections, club activities and other commercial ideas that the council can now trial easily.
Service innovation: The council now uses its agents more tactically—prioritising staff for firsttime callers and for more complex transactions where greater empathy is extra important. For other interactions, people are encouraged to find information in a more cost-efficient way. These include on the website, via their MyAccount dashboard or through the webchat. Here, sessions typically cost as little as 10p to complete and five conversations can take place simultaneously.
Improved customer experience: First-call resolution is very high and customer satisfaction scores are typically in the 80-90% range. Call abandonment rates have dropped and callers are informed about where they are in the queue, a function not previously available.
Actionable data in real time: In cases of extreme weather or other emergencies, it's now easy for the council to react swiftly. A wallboard displays waiting times and call handling times— so managers can assign staff to meet demand easily. Meanwhile, monitoring and statistical reports are helping managers fine tune the IVR continually. The council is also looking at ways to match callers with the most suitable agents, based on each resident's estimated level of knowledge. Managers can also track individual conversations and use them for staff training.
Aylesbury Vale has been able to showcase what's now achievable for local government in the age of cloud technology and artificial intelligence. Over 40 other local authorities have beaten a path to its door—to see how it's done. The council has also won awards and its success has been hailed in the media.
In its quest to take the customer experience to the next level and achieve £5 million of further savings by 2020/21, Aylesbury Vale is pioneering new selfservice tools. It's now become the first council to use a version of Amazon's 'Alexa' voice assistant to answer questions from residents via their MyAccount dashboard, whether that's about who their MP is or when their next bin collection is due.
With 8x8 X Series, Aylesbury Vale has a platform that will support its goals across multiple communications channels and a technology partner willing to push the boundaries. "8x8 is ambitious. They invest a lot each year in research and innovation which benefits us," says Andrew Grant.
"The tech doesn't stand still and we're always talking to 8x8 about what we'd like next. Over time, we're looking to develop how we use webchat, upgrade from PC-based working and find new ways to innovate at scale.”
"The cloud is the way forward for councils—it's distributed, secure and in tune with the desires and needs of residents. Doing nothing means going bust for local authorities.”
To learn more about how 8x8 worked with Aylesbury Vale District Council,
Speak to our public sector team at uk-publicsector@8x8.com
For more information call 0333 043 8888 or visit 8x8.com/uk-public-sector
