How Hartlepool Balanced Resident Needs and Council Budgets to Create User-Friendly Services

OVERVIEW

Meeting digital demands with five-star service

Faced with growing demand for digital services, Hartlepool Borough Council found themselves behind the times when it came to mobile and online capabilities. Thanks to taking a modular approach with Granicus products, they’ve gone from 3% digital contact with residents to over 15,000 users giving the council five-star ratings for their online services.

SITUATION

Bringing digital services up to resident expectations

Sitting on a limestone peninsula that has made it a steadfast seaport and harbour town dating back to medieval days, Hartlepool serves as the seat of Durham County. And while progress has transitioned the town away from its shipbuilding and marine engineering industries, the Hartlepool Council found in recent years that technology was increasing demands for more accessible digital solutions for residents looking for easier interaction with council needs.

“Going back to 2016, we only had something like 3% of contact coming through digital channels,” recalls Julie Howard, Digital and Customer Services Manager for Hartlepool Borough Council. “It was a very sort of poor offering to residents.”

Howard knew that Hartlepool was “quite behind a lot of other authorities in terms of our digital offer.” As interest increased from residents, Hartlepool needed to put more digital solutions in place. But like all local authorities, Hartlepool was faced with tight budgets and the need to develop strategies that were financially prudent, if not revenue-generating.

“The council’s digital transformation strategy consisted of a number of work streams,” she says. “But as we looked at a business case, it needed to be cost neutral.”

SOLUTION

Meeting citizen needs with flexible solutions

In order to effectively and efficiently, both in time and budget, establish a groundwork for future digital growth, the digital team focused on enhancing customer service delivery to its residents. In order to do that, while remaining budget neutral, the program also looked to review or replace existing systems.

RESULTS

A blueprint for expanding success

The influence of modernisation has changed the relationship between Hartlepool residents and the council, while providing the ability to better tailor response to digital users.

By publishing digital processes to the public through their website, the council was able to reduce the number of calls that came though the contact centre. Whereas previous systems required staff to answer calls and key information into the CRM system, the self-service approach govService provides allows many processes to be completed by public users, leading to what Howard calls, “An improvement in terms of contact coming into the organisation” both for internet and mobile users.

“We’ve done a lot of customer satisfaction monitoring since this transition started,” she adds. “Just short of 15,000 users have rated the platform as five stars and on average, processes rated 4.6 stars out of five. We’re definitely seeing high levels of satisfaction coming through our web channels and it was much more cost effective when delivering our services as well.”

Some of the areas that Hartlepool has integrated into their digitisation strategy include automated processes for Blue Badge applications and booking systems for their household waste recycling centre. During the COVID pandemic in 2020, govService also powered an informational hub that provided vital prescription pick up services, food access, and social support information through Hartlepool’s adult social care team.

The influence of digitisation is impacting councillors responding to community needs, as well. With the creation of a Councillor Portal, counsellors within Hartlepool can manage a wide range of transactions submitted by residents. From streetlight outages to fly tipping and littering, councillors are able to see all open cases in their local area.

“They get a full appreciation of what is happening within their locality, access key council information and submit council questions,” says Howard. “Really it’s a one-stop shop for councillors to be able to manage all their council business in one place.”

The ability to modernise services while consolidating the tools to create those services provides both a time savings and, ultimately, the cost savings for which Hartlepool was looking. Howard says that decommissioning previous systems has led to an estimated cost savings of £50,000 per annum.