City of San Antonio
Enhances Its Omnichannel
User Experience with Verint
Opportunity
City governments are complex organizations that exist to serve communities, providing awealth of information and services to community residents. If a city’s job is done right, its
services are transparent – until they fail.
In San Antonio, Texas, with a population of more than 1.5 million people, SA311 (311customer service) receives nearly one million interactions annually via multiple channels,including the call center, web portal, emails, and a mobile application. It is part ofa citywide business initiative that enhances citizen service by focusing on improved
communications, data tracking and reporting, and overall service delivery performance.

Customer
Success StorySolutions
Verint® for CitizenEngagement™

Industry
Local government

Critical to this initiative, Verint® for Citizen Engagement™ is helping SA311 simplify,modernize, and automate citizen engagement and transform service delivery.
A case-in-point was the opportunity to move forward with new user experience (UX)
initiatives as part of a Verint software upgrade that would create greater synergy between
the City’s CRM system and its 311 web self-service portal presence. The goal was to create auser experience that would enhance the City’s digital platforms, making it easier for citizens
to engage with the City on the channel of their choice.

RegionUnited States

Solution
Even though the UX initiative was introduced while a larger Verint software upgrade project
was already in progress, City leadership recognized that the UX benefits would far outweighany extra costs, rework, and delays.
Working closely with Verint, the City initiated and completed an intensive usability study withmultiple departments. This included internal employee focus groups, as well as facilitatedresident groups, which provided feedback regarding the City’s 311 services. Using existing
Verint for Citizen Engagement forms as a baseline to build upon, the City was able to gain
deep insights from these focus groups.
Based on this work, City of San Antonio established its own set of UX principles. These
included “listen to me and my situation;” “understand my emotional connection to theissue;” “provide closure, even if the issue is not resolved;” “tell me why and providecontext;” and “educate me and let me know how I can help.” An iterative process consistingof multiple phases of user testing was put in place to revise existing forms, which, inturn, enabled the City to efficiently refine and fully optimize them. As a result, this madereporting much more visual and frictionless, further enhancing the customer experience.
Additionally, service updates include structured notes to better inform residents of theoutcome of their service requests.

Results• Enhanced a highlyuser-focusedomnichannelexperience.
• Elevated engagement
between the Cityand the community
by enabling citizens
to interact via theirchannel of choice.
• Implemented astandardized process
for all services
and improved theinformation anddetails of resolution.

What we are doing is really thinking about the user experience.
About more access and content through channels, devices,accessibility, language, availability, and findability.
That is the UX culture we are building.
– Louise Craig, Experience Architect, Information Technology Service Department, City of San Antonio
Because of its work to improve the SA311 user experience,
the City discovered several best practices to consider whenembarking on a UX and customer experience improvement
journey.

1. Involve UX at the start: Stay customer and user
focused from the very beginning to decrease reworkand delays, as well as to help reduce overall cost.

2. Do not get defensive or allow missed opportunities:
Take outside opinions into consideration, encourage
whiteboarding, raise awareness, and revitalize existing
partnerships. Promoting collaboration across teams
results in improved UX.

3. Stack the project team with UX pros to mitigate
negative results: Ensure that the project team has thenecessary UX skills to execute. Identify and empower a“UX champion” to make decisions and redirect actions.

4. Make sure the primary business stakeholders are
truly invested: Avoid reluctant stakeholders, as they
can cause friction and potentially lead to losing key
people mid-project. Also, do not underestimate theeffectiveness of a great demo in elevating collaborationand moving the project forward.

Benefits
Since the successful upgrade of Verint for Citizen
Engagement and launch of Verint online forms, City of San
Antonio has experienced a wide range of benefits for bothits operations and citizens. The City emerged with a highlyuser-focused experience across the board. In addition,
it was able to build and strengthen relationships acrossdepartments in the process.
Citizens can now efficiently and effectively engage andinteract with SA311 via their channel of choice, whether
online via mobile app or web portal, by phone via the 311
call center, or through digital channels such as social media
and email.
Moreover, thanks to Verint online forms, San Antonio
residents can now self-report various issues – from potholes,
graffiti, and traffic signal/sign maintenance to animalrelated matters and trash/code concerns – through theirsmartphones and a variety of other devices. Reported
incidents are then logged by the City and automaticallyrouted to relevant city departments, making it easier thanever for the City to quickly connect with constituents tostreamline and speed resolution. Furthermore, the new web
portal allows residents to set up an account where they can
track and monitor the progress of their requests.

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

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