The City of Edinburgh Council

Customer
Success Story

The City of Edinburgh Council Increases Customer
Satisfaction from 70% to 85% with VerintSolutions
Verint® Engagement

Opportunity
The City of Edinburgh Council is always looking to the future; continually exploring
innovative ways to enhance its customer service capabilities using digital-firststrategies. By implementing new services that put residents and businesses first, theleading Scottish local authority can deliver superior service with less effort.
However, to achieve heightened customer-centricity, the Council first had to overcome
some challenges. Most notably, its legacy customer relationship management (CRM)
system was no longer fit for purpose. The Council aspired to ensure that the citizen
journey was joined up and could be viewed end to end by employees, and with residents
receiving proactive communications to inform them of the progress of their enquiry.
When a citizen contacted the Council to report an incident, such as a broken street light ora missed bin collection, there was no single, end-to-end view of that transaction. The 200agents in the Council’s call centre had to switch between systems in support of citizens’ needs,
leading to a less than optimal customer experience due to disconnected, delayed responses.

Management Professional™

Industry
Local Government

RegionUnited Kingdom“Our original processes were built to suit the Council’s needs, which is something that manyorganisations fall into the trap of,” says Nicola Harvey, Head of Customer & Digital Services
at City of Edinburgh Council. “The Council now aspire to put the citizens needs first, which
in turn will make us more effective, efficient and allow us to deal with the enquiry at firstpoint of contact. Our new aim was to do what we promised to do: get the basics right,
respond quickly and proactively to the people of Edinburgh – whatever the request. That
new customer journey also needed to be digital-led, simple, and efficient.”

Results
Solution
The Council engaged with four vendors, creating a “heat map” to assess the capabilities ofeach potential solution provider. Verint® was tops across much of the criteria, ranging fromproduct functionality and track record, to speed of implementation and future roadmap.
“Whereas some vendors shoe-horned their solution to meet our goals, the Verint platform
was fit for purpose from day one,” Harvey explains. “The rich, out-of-the-box functionality
was ideal for a public authority like the City of Edinburgh Council. In addition, Verint neverover-promised. We could trust doing business with them.”
Working in close collaboration with Verint’s professional services team, along with integration
partner CGI, the Council deployed Verint Engagement Management Professional™ in just sixmonths. The Verint solution integrates a multichannel Agent Desktop with Forms, Customer
Portal, Process Manager, and Knowledge Management to deliver an agile and adaptive
customer engagement platform geared to customers’ needs.
“The six-month deployment schedule was ambitious,” says Harvey. “However, the entire
team – Verint, the Council, our IT services provider, and other stakeholders – worked as
one to deliver an on-time, on-budget implementation. Credit for that success is due in part

• Increased customer
satisfaction from70% to 85%.
• Use of online selfservice increased
from 5% to 30%.
• Developed anddeployed the solution
in six months toachieve quicker ROI.
• Delivers an intuitive,
agile, and highly
rewarding service
engagement
experience.
• Improves decision
making via complete,timely, and unified
reporting data.

This is a capital city using innovative technology to radically change
and redefine its approach to service delivery – ultimately bettering
the lives of the citizens of Edinburgh.
– Nicola Harvey, Head of Customer & Digital Services, City of Edinburgh Council

to the Verint professional services group. The team wasextremely professional. They understood what we were
trying to achieve and worked hard to build a change culture
based around our agents’ needs.”
Verint Engagement Management Professional is intuitive
for both citizens and staff. Now, for example, when a citizen
contacts the Council through the portal or another channel
to report an incident such as illegal deposit of waste, theagent has an immediate, complete picture of the locationand is able to pinpoint the problem directly on a map. Once
reported, the resident receives remediation status updates
by email. If other citizens report the same problem, theinnovative Verint software identifies the duplication, notifying
the citizens that the incident is already being dealt with.

• Time to value: By implementing the Verint solution in
only six months, the Council was able to achieve a quicker
return on investment.

• User experience: Verint Engagement Management
Professional is popular with agents. They like the unified
approach to data, the intuitive navigation, and the clear,simple forms. Local politicians have even approached
Harvey’s team about adding extra functionality, such asreporting malfunctioning traffic lights.

• Reporting: The single, complete view of the customer
is accelerating and streamlining reporting. Management
information that took days to compile by spreadsheet
is now available in a few clicks – increasing agility andimproving decision making.

• Compliance: The modern, integrated process management

Benefits
Verint Engagement Management Professional istransforming the Council’s approach to customer
engagement – enhancing the service delivery experience,increasing efficiency, and introducing powerful andrewarding self-service. The benefits include:• Customer experience: Proactive, frequently automatedcommunication is helping to deliver a personalised, responsive,and rewarding service experience. Other advancements,
such as agents use of mapping technology to view theCouncil’s assets have enabled more rapid identification
and resolution of public service issues. As a result,customer satisfaction has increased from 70 to 85 percent.

• Efficiency: The Verint platform eliminates manualintervention, removing the “middle office” and shifting
services to responsive digital, self-service channels. Infact, the volume of residents transacting online has risen
from five to 30 percent. There has also been a reduction in
average handle time and more enquiries are now resolved
at the first point of contact.

functionality within the Verint platform makes it easier forthe Council to comply with current regulatory requirements,
such as GDPR, and adapt to new compliance rules.
Verint Engagement Management Professional has also been
an invaluable resource to the Council during the COVID-19
pandemic. In just three weeks, the Verint professional services
team worked with the Council to develop a system to support
citizens shielding themselves from the virus. The Council
used the single, timely view of shielding residents to manage
the delivery of medication, foods, and other essential items.
“We are immensely proud of our achievements in such ashort time,” Harvey concludes. “This is a capital city using
innovative technology to radically change and redefine its
approach to service delivery – ultimately bettering the livesof the citizens of Edinburgh.”

Learn more about
Verint Customer Engagement Solutionsat www.verint.com

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