Customer Stories
Weathering the storm: ABC Borough Council’s masterclass in crisis management
Discover how Northern Ireland’s second-largest council used automated workflows to filter the chatter, reduce response times, and shrink stakeholder reporting from hours to minutes.
Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council (ABC Council) is Northern Ireland’s second-largest local authority, encompassing around 11% of the Northern Ireland population. The council is committed to upholding the highest standards as part of its corporate plan, ‘Our People, Our Place and Our Future’.
The challenge
ABC Council were looking to migrate their team from a legacy social media management tool to Orlo. Their goal was to replace old ways of working with a more organised, centralised workflow for content posting, demand management, and reporting across their comms and wider council teams. Just as they transitioned to the new platform, a red-warning storm hit the region, creating an immediate and massive surge in public inquiries that needed urgent attention and crisis management. This is where Orlo’s Value Delivery Team stepped in to help equip the team with what they needed to help manage the situation.
The solution
Working closely with the Orlo Team, ABC Council underwent a comprehensive implementation process specifically tailored to their multi-departmental needs. To ensure a secure and effective transition from their old tech to Orlo, the team built a structured environment with the Orlo platform, which featured:
Permissions & Approvals: Custom user groups were set up for Admin, Comms, and Service Area users to restrict access appropriately. Alongside this, a mandatory approval workflow was implemented so that content is reviewed and approved by an admin before going live, protecting the Council’s brand reputation and voice.
Automated Demand Management: Orlo Triggers and Inbox Tags were used to categorise messages automatically. High-stakes enquiries were auto-tagged as ‘P1’ as part of priority routing, sorting out critical issues from everyday noise. This included messages which included words and phrases like ‘Rates’ and ‘Bins and Recycling’ to help with filtering and reporting. Keywords were added to also include weather warnings, allowing the team to be proactive as the crisis unfolded, tracking important storm mentions as they came in.
Centralised Dashboards: A dedicated view for all live, scheduled and approved/disapproved posts was set up to ensure brand consistency across the organisation. This approval and disapproval dashboard allowed the Digital Marketing and Engagement Officer, as the team admin, to easily see which posts needed approval. A second response management dashboard was created to give visibility on P1 direct messages and comments, which ensured priority inbound messages and comments were never overlooked.
Campaign Mapping: A ‘Parent-Child’ hierarchy was created to align all social media activity directly with specific corporate priorities and allow clear campaign reporting so the team are able to see what content is landing well with their audience and what’s missing the mark.
The results
Because of this comprehensive implementation process, ABC Council was able to transition from setup, straight into full-scale crisis management from day one. When the red warning storm hit during their first week of go-live, the automated P1 tagging instantly isolated high-risk weather messages. The team proactively published updates via the composer to keep the public informed and safe, successfully maintaining public trust and operational control during a high-stakes, unplanned event.
Their digital engagement and reporting capabilities also saw a dramatic improvement, with the new system’s priority functionality streamlining their entire workflow. As they were now set up to associate posts to campaigns, as well as easily tag high-risk mentions, the team were able to quickly pull reports using options like the Campaign Report and Inbox Report to pull posts and messages related to the storm and see the impact on volume and demand.
They saw a significant 50% reduction in response times on messages marked as high-risk as part of the implementation work, compared to ‘normal’ engagement. With the team achieving an average response time of 1-hour. And, it was not only during the crisis period that improvements were seen, but a 2-hour average response time was also reported within the first 4 weeks of implementing Orlo within the organisation, an improvement on the previous system’s 3-hour average, representing 80% efficiency on the industry average. These levels of reporting and overall visibility meant that stakeholder reporting time was reduced from a manual average of 4 hours to just a matter of minutes.
Outcome
50%
reduction in response times on high-risk marked messages during the crisis
Outcome
33.33%
improvement in average response time in the first 4 weeks
Reach
90,000
residents reached across social media
Engagement
107
shares generated from 25 proactive posts over 2 days of crisis
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As a large local government authority with an ever-expanding social media presence, getting on board with Orlo has been game-changing. From day one, the platform created a dramatic positive impact in helping us develop and progress our digital engagement and reporting capabilities.
The Orlo team have been outstanding in their support and encouragement, from initial contact through to initiation and implementation, helping us each step of the way. The platform has not only improved how we as a council engage with our stakeholders, both internally and externally, but it has opened up a world of possibilities that will allow us to confidently grow and achieve our digital vision for the future.”
Jeff Byers, Digital Marketing and Engagement Officer at Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council
