SUCCESS STORY | Carmarthenshire County Council
Transforming public engagement in Carmarthenshire: A unified approach with GXC
OVERVIEW
As one of the largest local authorities in Wales, Carmarthenshire County Council is dedicated to easing the lives of those it serves. From its coastal regions to its rural communities — and everywhere in between — this is an organisation that prides itself on providing efficient and accessible services to its residents. But as we’ll see, with Government Experience Cloud (GXC), the council has combined enhanced engagement and communications and digital service delivery to strengthen its ability to reach residents and provide dependable support across the community.
SITUATION
Having already embedded the Granicus Communications platform within its operations, the council upgraded to GXC to provide more digital services to the community, opting to implement Service Cloud. As Digital Content Manager Lowri Jones explains, these solutions support multiple functions throughout the organisation, but especially those undertaken by staff within the council’s media and marketing team, where the solutions are relied upon as trusted tools to communicate with Carmarthenshire’s residents.
Lowri says Carmarthenshire County Council’s main challenge is trying to get residents to “engage with us and having a means which is comfortable for them to do so digitally.” Millie E. Pegler, marketing and communications officer within the council’s fostering service, says the community is eager to engage on its own terms, as well, seeking better understanding around the council’s programmes and services.
SOLUTION
As Lowri explains, the organisation now uses Service Cloud to support the vast majority of the services it offers. While the Service Request Management (govService) capability powers its customer account and contact centre, Service Cloud’s Communications capability allows the council to speak with residents via email, text, and electronic forms.
For Millie, the Granicus Communications platform “allows us to keep our residents informed and engaged, which ultimately improves the services we provide them with.” The service uses the drip campaign functionality to send regular news, stories, and updates to subscribers interested in the council’s fostering operations. This “allows us to keep them ‘warm’ whilst they’re in the earlier stages of thinking about fostering, providing them with all the information they need to make that decision to enquire,” Millie says, adding that this has brought a sense of ease to her role within the council’s fostering service, a point that helps her to better serve Carmarthenshire’s residents.
RESULTS
Despite using the system for a relatively short span of time, Lowri observes that the combined power of GXC is already having a positive impact on the council’s operations. Thus far, she says, “We seem to be using it very well.”
While the benefits of the platform will be realised in the fullness of time, Lowri and Millie are able to offer tangible insight into the results that it has brought to the council. Lowri says Carmarthenshire County Council is now — as a result of implementing this platform — seeing increased rates of resident engagement compared to their previously used system.
Since setting up the “Interested in Fostering” mailing list, “We’ve gained 185 subscribers to date,” Millie says. “It’s a niche topic, so we aren’t expecting masses of subscribers to this, but we have an engagement rate of 68%, which points toward us having the right people signed up.”
Looking to the future, the aspiration is that — with a deeper, more comprehensive use of the Service Cloud platform — the council stands to benefit in both its operations and its engagement with its residents. While Lowri says she’s looking forward to the benefits
that a more comprehensive utilisation of the system will bring to the wider organisation, Millie’s goals are more concrete. “I’d like to keep growing our ‘Interested in Fostering’ newsletter, as well as improve our ‘Interested in Adoption’ and ‘Adopters’ newsletters by introducing a drip campaign to those,” she explains.
But whatever time holds for Carmarthenshire and its residents, it’s clear GXC will play a part in helping to meet the needs of the wider community.
