Townsville City Council,  the local government body located on Queensland’s north coast, is guarding against disaster with the adoption of a clod-based knowledge management solution from Australia’s livepro.

The improvements that livepro in the Cloud bring were identified as desirable after Cyclone Yasi tore through the city on February 3 2011. Due to the severity of the storm and ensuing damage, the Townsville CSC was forced to shut down and Customer enquiries were re-routed to Toowoomba City Council. With limited information about what was happening in Townsville, the Toowoomba Customer Service Representatives were limited in the advice they could provide to Townsville residents.

livepro in the Cloud can be accessed securely from anywhere an internet connection and web browser are available, providing business continuity to Townsville City Council in times of disaster or in the event of an unexpected office closure.

Townsville City Council won the category of ‘Most Innovative Project’ for the Government Contact Centre 2012 Summit Awards.

The Townsville City Council Customer Service Centre (CSC) has over 30 full time employees and 50 seats and is responsible for a myriad of tasks including responding to customer queries, handling payment transactions for all Council operations and managing reception and visitor needs.

Townsville CSC is an inbound and outbound contact centre that handles over 200,000 calls per year as well as handling communications through multiple channels including email, web, online chat and social media.

The  integrated Knowledge Management solution has reduced Averaging Handling Time (AHT) and on-hold time; AHT is down by an average of 8 seconds and on hold-time by an average of 12 seconds per call.

It has simplified processes around complex service requests; and reduced re-work due to errors. 

The system has also reduced reliance on email as a method of communicating process changes and information updates. 

Megan Leavy, Executive Manager Customer Service at Townsville City Council headed up the search for a suitable Knowledge Management solution. 

“Before livepro, we lacked an integrated Knowledge Management system that was user friendly, accurate and acted as a central repository of systems, processes and information.

“We decided on livepro as it specialises in catering for process-driven organisations with the need to define, maintain and rapidly deliver constantly changing information on an active basis and in a consistent way to all personnel,” said Mrs. Leavy.

Townsville CSC made the decision to adopt livepro in January 2012 and immediately started the implementation process. They were under a tight deadline as they needed to get livepro up and running by February 15th in time for their busy Council Rates period. 

By implementing livepro as a Cloud service, setting up and gaining access to the system was fast and did not require any IT involvement.

Megan Leavy said, “Since implementing livepro there have been numerous positive impacts on the CSC business.

“livepro has helped us simplify processes around complex service requests, reducing the amount of errors made by Customer Service Representatives. Reducing errors has made it easier for other Business Units to complete these service requests, and thus helped strengthen the relationships between the CSC and other Business Units. Also, by providing basic training to the other Business Units, they now better understand the role of the CSC and are able to provide Customer Service Representatives with real-time updates and alerts directly through livepro.

“Training time for new inductees has been reduced and further time and cost savings in this area are expected in the future. With livepro, knowledge gaps can be easily identified; enabling targeted training for further cost savings and customer experience improvements.

“Finally, this project also supports Townsville City Council’s disaster response capabilities; livepro in the Cloud means that critical knowledge can be accessed anywhere via an internet connection and web browser, enabling CSC staff to work remotely or another Council to access the Townsville City Council knowledge in times of crises.”