erintierney
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2023 Customer Awards: NSW Government - Department of Customer Service - Keep Calm and Carry On
Company: NSW Government - Department of Customer Service Company background: The NSW Department of Customer Service (DCS) is committed to enhancing customer service and simplifying government interactions. DCS strives to ensure that the people of NSW receive exceptional customer service when engaging with the NSW Government. The department encompasses over 30 agencies, entities, and business units, impacting millions of people daily. Customers can access services from the Department's various agencies through one of 20+ social media channels, such as Service NSW, Fair Trading, SafeWork, and the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. DCS's mission is to provide excellent customer service, digital leadership, and innovation in government services, as well as safe and secure markets. We aim to: • Deliver a more consistent and efficient digital experience for the people of NSW • Use data and behavioural insights to enhance customer service • Engage more effectively with the people of NSW Contact: Erin Tierney Title: Senior Social Media Advisor (Customer) Related URLs: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceNSW Kudos Category: Keep Calm and Carry On 1. How did your team shift your existing strategy by using Khoros technology to better engage customers during a crisis? DCS has worked with Khoros in community management since 2020, helping improve our social media customer experience during crises such as COVID-19 (over 186,000 comments, posts, and messages, and over 47,000 personalized responses), subsequent lockdowns, and extreme flooding in the northern part of the state in 2022 (over 40,000 comments, posts, and messages, and over 9,000 personalized responses. DCS responded quickly and proactively to the data breach, providing customers with clear and concise information about what had happened and what they could do to protect themselves. We also provided personalised support to customers affected by the breach, where they could ask questions and get help from our team. The event caused a surge in enquiries across two weeks - over 6,000 messages, comments and posts were received by the channels, with 2,000 requiring personalised support. 2. What operational processes did you create or change to respond in a time of crisis? How were you able to be innovative using Khoros? Khoros Care provided the team with a number of features that helped them to effectively manage the large number of enquiries, many of which were sensitive in nature. These features included: Triaging of posts: Khoros allowed the team to prioritize posts based on urgency, so that those who needed help the most were responded to first. SharePoint knowledge base integration: Khoros integrated with Service NSW’s SharePoint knowledge base, so that agents had access to the same information as the contact centre and physical locations. This ensured that agents were able to provide accurate and up-to-date information to customers. Sentiment tagging: Khoros allowed the team to tag posts with sentiment, so that they could track customer sentiment and identify any emerging trends. Real-time reporting: Khoros provided real-time reporting of incoming volume, responses, sentiment, and key themes. This allowed the team to quickly identify and respond to any issues. SLA tracking: Khoros tracked the team's SLAs on first response, ensuring that customers were responded to within 3 hours. Personalised care: Khoros allowed the team to provide personalised care to repeat customers. This ensured that customers felt like they were being heard and understood. Proactive messaging: Khoros allowed the team to send proactive messages to customers, providing them with information and updates. Welcome messaging: Khoros allowed the team to update their ‘welcome messaging’ to direct customers to critical information outside business hours. Over the course of two weeks, the DCS Cluster customer care team proactively changed their messaging to better meet the needs of their customers. The team was able to report on how customers felt about the changes and identify any information gaps. 3. What success metrics did you use to determine if your shifts in strategy and process had the desired outcomes? What were those quantifiable outcomes? Please be as specific as possible. Over the course of two weeks, the DCS Cluster customer care team proactively changed their messaging to better meet the needs of their customers. The team was able to report on how customers felt about the changes and identify any information gaps. Despite the significant volume of enquiries and sensitive natures, the DCS Cluster social media team was able to uphold the high-level service that they have become known for while continuing BAU and keeping customers' data safe. Special Thanks: Roberto Piagentini, Irene Vrcelj Case Study Opt-In: No2021 Customer Awards: NSW Government - Department of Customer Service - Rookie of the Year
Company: NSW Government - Department of Customer Service Company background: The Department of Customer Service was established on 1 July 2019 and wants to give the people of NSW a great customer experience when they interact with the NSW Government. There are more than 30 agencies, entities and business units in our department. Our work impacts affect millions of people on any given day. Contact: Erin Tierney Title: Social Media Community Manager Related URLs: https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/ Kudos Category: Rookie of the Year 1. Describe your company and your organization. The NSW Department of Customer Service (DCS) aims to make it easier to deal with government by driving improvements in customer service. DCS wants to give the people of NSW a great customer experience when they interact with the NSW Government. There are more than 30 agencies, entities and business units within the department, with our work impacting millions of people on any given day. Customers can connect with the Department’s various agencies through one of 20+ social media channels including those for Service NSW, Fair Trading, SafeWork, and the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. The mission of the Department of Customer Service is to deliver excellence in customer service, digital leadership and innovation in government services. We aim: to establish the customer at the centre of all programs and initiatives across the NSW Government to deliver a more consistent and efficient digital experience for the people of NSW to use data and behavioural insights to drive customer service improvement The DCS social media team generally consists of eight employees, two of whom actively moderate and respond to incoming comments and messages. 2. Why did you choose to invest in Khoros and what was your experience before making the switch from a previous solution or investing in new technology. The DCS social media team faced a major challenge when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March 2020. Drivers licence tests were cancelled, Service NSW service centres were operating at reduced hours and numerous customers sought guidance from Fair Trading on cancelled travel and rental agreements – all of which lead to rapid spikes in conversation volume across DCS’ social channels. Without a social media management tool in place at the time, the social team was navigating these 20+ social channels natively, a process which was proving painfully time-consuming and inefficient. Response times climbed to upwards of 8 hours, comments and enquiries were being missed and the social media team was steadily growing overwhelmed by an ever-growing cascade of messages that were not being easily triaged and prioritised. The social media team consequently became purely reactive in function, unable to adequately feed back into the organisational trending themes and topics, or report on basic metrics. Over 2020 and 2021, as COVID-19 continued to take its toll through various lockdowns, border closures, mandatory mask-wearing, QR code check-ins in addition to standard BAU comments and inquiries, volume spiked across all DCS social channels. 3. What were your goals when investing in Khoros technology and what successes have you already experienced because of the investment? Please include metrics, if possible. Recognising the urgent need to improve service delivery workflow, the DCS social media team partnered with Khoros in July 2020, streamlining our 20 social media channels through Khoros Care, to: cut down response times to an average response time of 5 minutes 30 seconds improve Median TAR by 36% over 9 months better track open, pending conversations (we can now see over the past 9 months we have tracked over 8,000 conversations and 100,000 incoming posts) report on trending themes and topics track sentiment conversion have greater visibility of volume/capacity, response times, agent efficiency and customer satisfaction achieve almost 80% of what is considered a good SLA (faster than the call centre at times!) Since partnering with Khoros, the social media team has felt empowered to tackle the ensuing 100,000+ incoming comments and 8,000 incoming conversations received, effectively tagging conversations so that feedback could be reported back up to the executive level. The team is now in a position to be proactive rather than reactive, getting ahead of potential enquiries by creating content based off trending topics and enquiries. The aim was to ensure that NSW customers received a world-class experience via social media. The improvement to both staff and customer experience upon employing Khoros Care was instant. Some further gains experienced include: Common FAQs being more easily managed through the template functionality, cutting down time needed to answer simple questions and allowing for focus on more intricate enquiries. Customer profiles proving invaluable to provide updates and actions across the team. The ability to utilise the profile functionality to provide the latest updates on customer communications was integral to providing a more personalised customer experience – particularly during remote working over 2020 and 2021 when having effective communication for existing issues and resolutions was as essential as ever. The social media team have been able to significantly pivot the online experience for customers, being state citizens, using Khoros to become a world-class point-of-contact for NSW customers, delivering important COVID-19 and operational information across the department’s multiple initiatives. Khoros Care has allowed us to directly fulfill the mission, goals and priorities of our organisation where the customer is at the heart of everything we do.
