Customer Stories
Managing social media in the face of adversity
As is often the case with local authorities, change can take a while to happen. But when the team at Reading Borough Council took a leap of faith to invest in their first-ever social media management platform, the timing couldn’t have been better.
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Little did they know that the world was about to be turned on its head thanks to COVID-19, and the council would be tested further due to a horrific terrorist attack in June 2020.
Initially, Orlo allowed them to bring all the messages flooding their social media channels into one central inbox. Three members of the customer services team were trained and up and running within a week, enabling them to take the majority of the day-to-day queries off the hands of the social media team. Orlo’s ability to assign queries to other users meant that other members of the council team could lend a hand as well!
And it was when the team were faced with a crisis within a crisis, that the Orlo platform really proved its worth. At their fingertips, they had the ability to freeze all scheduled social media posts, filter out the noise and fully focus efforts on reassuring the general public, managing misinformation and informing people of the facts.
Efficiency
314%
Increase in messages dealt with in the first 6 months
Audience
22%
Growth in Facebook followers March – May 2020
Audience
66%
Growth in Facebook likes November 2019 – June 2020
Citizens can now expect a firm SLA for responses to their enquiries, with our comms and customer service teams being able to work closer than we ever have before, providing a unified tone of voice and a consistent experience for the public.
Victoria Nickless
Media & Communications Manager
We went down to phone lines being open for emergencies only but we quickly realised that we needed another channel for customers to reach us on. We went from having nothing on the website for live chat, to having a fully embedded system.”
Jasmine Dudgon
Communications Specialist
