Sarah Barrow, Head of Customer Services & Administration, Wokingham Borough Council
As head of customer services & administration at Wokingham Borough Council in the UK, I’m responsible for ensuring the 160,000 residents, as well as businesses, of Wokingham Borough are well-connected to the Council. This is not just done via phone or in-person meetings anymore. Communication has modernised with the shifting culture, so we’re finding more of our customers now prefer to use email, mobile devices and social media. So we’ve been mirroring their preferred forms of communication with the cloud-based LiveOps Platform, which I recently spoke about at the IQPC Call Centre Europe conference in London.
Communicating with such a diverse customer base is always a challenge. Modern communication methods dictate much faster response times and with resource pressures from Government, we had to find a solution that improved the organisation and efficiency of our responses. LiveOps gave us the ability to manage all types of customer contact in a holistic way. The LiveOps Platform enables the Council to monitor and respond to residents’ comments and questions in real time via email, SMS, web chat, and social media. Utilising cloud technology in our contact centre facilitates and encourages home and flexible working, saving 50 percent in office space, increasing productivity and decreasing sickness and absenteeism. The way in which we have engaged with our residents using Twitter during a recent major change to their council services has had a very positive impact on public perception.
By working with LiveOps, Wokingham Borough Council has reduced costs and administration, shrunk its environmental foot print, increased the quality of communication with our residents and has been recognized nationally for outstanding customer service communications. By enabling real time interactions with our residents, we are making people’s daily lives better — a powerful and wonderful outcome of moving to the cloud.
Sarah Barrow
Head of Customer Services & Administration
Wokingham Borough Council
