Customer Stories
Transforming customer contact to deliver a seamless citizen experience
The team at Leeds City Council have been able to harness the power of social by implementing the right tools and an adaptable approach to cross-team collaboration, leading to stellar results on major campaigns and day-to-day issues.
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Leeds City Council is dedicated to providing an empathetic, professional and timely customer experience, for all citizens in their times of need. They have built upon a strong foundation to become industry-leading in their approach to customer contact. As the second largest council in the UK, it is at the forefront of digital transformation within local government.
The challenge
After experiencing an increase in inbound contact centre volumes the team sought to implement a series of process and strategy changes to help manage these enquiries efficiently, deflecting demand away from their already stretched Customer Service Team. Aside from the myriad of day-to-day enquiries – on refuse, highways and schools – the cost of living crisis had led the public to reach out to the council in relation to food banks and welfare, causing an influx of inbound enquiries.
The solution
A new, collaborative approach to dealing with inbound demand saw the council utilise the power of tech to streamline their approach to social, learn from and build upon past campaigns and share knowledge across teams to better serve the Leeds population. With separate Social Media, Comms, Customer Service and Web teams working together to handle inbound interactions across channels. Opening up social as a communication channel has allowed them to engage with a wider demographic by being on citizens’ channels of choice. Messages are replied to by trained Social Media Agents – all of whom have a background in Customer Service, allowing agents in the call centre to focus on enquiries that need a one-on-one approach.
The results
The natural cost savings attributed to customer service via social, compared to phone, have been phenomenal in terms of pounds and pence, but also agents’ time. By using Orlo, agents working across their socials are able to handle several inbound chats at once, whereas agents working on the phones would be tied to a single enquiry. Without having their socials open as a contact channel for citizens, they would have undoubtedly been forced to seek help via the phone lines. The total amount of inbound social enquiries dealt with by the team between Jan and April 2023 was around 222 per day with an average of two key members of staff focused purely on answering and monitoring this demand. When compared to enquiries dealt with on their phone line, this is a dramatic increase and frees up valuable resources to deal with more serious issues which can only be resolved by phone, such as food bank referrals.
Efficiency
7 min
average first response time on social media
Efficiency
88%
of enquiries sorted without signposting to other channels
Demand Deflection
97%
of Messenger enquiries on council tax and benefits dealt with purely on social or signposted to self-serve via social
As more of our users embraced social media, we recognised the opportunity for its use as a customer service tool. We’ve had a very positive reaction from customers who can engage with us directly, interacting with members of our social team and receiving a quick response. Fast resolution is the main reason customers choose this channel of contact, rather than phone and email. Our dedicated team provides customer support via social media as an integral part of our customer service provision, as well as this being useful for outbound messaging on important issues.”
Mariana Pexton
Director for Strategy and Resources
