Over the last few years, many governments and public sector groups have begun rapidly updating their technology ecosystems to join the “digital” future and enhance customer service. The City of Toronto is just one example of an entity undergoing a rapid and consistent transformation.
Committed to delivering the highest possible quality of life for residents, visitors, and businesses alike, the City of Toronto has developed several policies over the years. The 311 service, for instance, represents the front line for the government group. This team is responsible for building relationships, showing value, establishing trust, and managing public expectations.
According to Gary Yorke, the Director of 311 for the City of Toronto, the division is keen and serving the public as best as possible. To achieve its customer service goals, the group relies heavily on the powerful features offered by Salesforce.
Here’s how Salesforce helps the City of Toronto to thrive.
Creating a Next-Level Service Strategy
The 311 service from the City of Toronto supports people internally and externally through a comprehensive approach to CX. The environment represents a gateway to City information, services, and programs. Using modern tools, knowledgeable and dedicated staff must be available at all times to provide a sensational customer experience.
According to Yorke, 311 is responsible for serving anyone living or visiting in the City of Toronto. Since the pandemic, the dynamic of delivering comfort and customer-centric consultation has changed the focus within the organisation.
The City of Toronto is currently made up of 45 divisions, all of which have been under significant pressure to digitize. The team needed a flexible system allowing them to collaborate and share resources and information when it came down to technology and staff. Users also needed to be able to report on the number of touchpoints coming in throughout the pandemic.
Upgrading the systems into the cloud was crucial to manage high volumes flooding phone lines. Yorke and his team decided not only to upgrade their existing service, but also to deliver services across a wider range of communication channels.
Implementing a New Customer Contact Strategy
Toronto saw this transformational adventure as an opportunity to centre its communication strategy around the customer journey, with a complete end-to-end view of interactions. According to Senior Systems Integrator, Abdi Osman, for the City of Toronto, the group wants its services to be accessible wherever its users are.
While a lot of the work managed by the team was delivered through phone interactions, they wanted to offer more, such as app and online service requests. The team launched their 311 contact centre, integrating multiple divisions and digitizing operations to deliver an omnichannel experience. With implementation support via Catalyst, the team expanded their efforts and moved into the Salesforce Customer 360 platform for Government.
The server-based call centre quickly became a full contact centre, but still, the city of Toronto wasn’t done. They decided to set up a cloud-based app pilot across the community to increase visibility, mitigate risk and reduce costs while offering more communication channels.
The new platform now allows residents of Toronto to create and track service requests using a community portal through the Salesforce Experience cloud. Toronto residents answer various intake questions to see if they meet certain criteria before a request can be made. After submitting a request, Salesforce Service Cloud manages it in a profile-like setting, so teams have better visibility into the context of the ticket.
Teams can enter notes and status updates, and customers get to track the progress of their requests. Customers even get a confirmation number and information regarding the amount of time it’s likely to take for a request to be completed.
Unlocking New Opportunities in the Cloud
Aside from allowing customers to track the progress of their service requests, the new Salesforce-focused ecosystem also provides a range of other benefits. The “Knowledge” feature allows residents to access general information about City services and programs, generating requests when necessary.
Toronto residents can even search through more than 5000 knowledge articles for information and connect directly with 311 Toronto through LiveChat when they can’t find a solution. The result is more informed citizens and more productive staff at the 311 centre.
Toronto residents can also use technology implemented by the City of Toronto to explore neighbourhood information. For instance, it’s possible to determine if someone has already requested the same service before issuing a support ticket. For instance, you can see if someone in your community has already reported a pothole before you enter your own ticket.
The Salesforce Social Studio allows the city to meet constituents wherever they are and deliver exceptional service through social channels. At the same time, Salesforce Tableau provides leadership, management, and specific resources teams with more abilities to assess performance, spot patterns, and surface the data insights teams need for faster service delivery.
The open and agile nature of the Salesforce cloud environment meant it was easy to link inquiries from mobile apps with inquiries from social media, website submissions, and other data. In terms of the overall confidence the solution offered and the ability the team now has to serve their users, it’s clear Salesforce has made a significant impact.
According to the City of Toronto, the new ecosystem has transformed and modernized how citizens connect with their government and public sector services. The 311 environment has become data-rich, so they can fully understand the interactions and transactions taking place internally and externally throughout their ecosystem.
With more information, the team has the context required to resolve cases quickly without sacrificing the quality of service. Even now, the public sector group is continuing to unlock the benefits of Salesforce, with 180 languages available to users, a 17% deflection in service requests, a 34% increase in knowledge-based interactions, and the ability to capture 100% of interactions for analytics.
