Projects

QC Connection

Town of Queen Creek
Queen Creek, AZ

Population: 25,000

Implemented: December, 2007

• GORequest
• GOEnforce

Project Description

The Town of Queen Creek has experienced torrid growth, and its customer service deteriorated as the Town struggled to keep up with residents’ needs.  While the Town continued to add staff, requests would get lost amidst the constantly shuffling organization, and even long-term employees couldn’t keep up with ever-changing service responsibilities.  Not surprisingly, residents were frustrated and angry, especially long-term residents that fondly remembered the high level of service they received when the community was much smaller.

Some of the symptoms to the problem included:

• Requests/questions would sometimes get routed to the wrong staff member, causing delays in response.
• Further delays would result when the appropriate staff person was out of the office, sometimes for extended periods.
• Coordinating activities between departments was troublesome, and different departments would be working on the same problem.
• There was no mechanism for tracking response times and completions, making it impossible for management to monitor service levels/standards and ensure accountability.
• Staff lacked the resources necessary to provide consistent answers to questions, causing residents to lose confidence.

The obvious possible answers to the growing pains were to balloon staffing levels or simply accept the lower levels of service as “inevitable.” These tactics are used by all types of organizations (both private and public) that face similar situations.  The Town management rejected the first option because it would later result in massive layoffs and, they believed, would result in only minimal short-term improvements.  Lower service quality was also rejected and staff was instructed to find an answer to the dilemma. 

Project Goals

Prior to the establishment of the QC Connection project, the Town Manager and Town Council set an overarching goal to improve customer service with the baseline standard that residents would receive a response to their question/request within 24 hours, to acknowledge the request, and provide an estimated timeline for resolution.  These goals, however, were unobtainable without putting into place new procedures and an infrastructure for methodically managing resolution and communication.  Understanding that communication was the key to success, the Town’s communication staff was assigned the task of devising and implementing a solution with the assistance of representatives from each department.

To realize this overarching vision, the Town identified these desired outcomes:

• Capture all requests and questions (not immediately answered) in a centralized location
• Respond to all questions/requests within 24 hours
• Complete all requests within timeframe appropriate to specific departments/services
• Make departments/staff accountable to conformance to service standards
• Create a centralized repository of information about services for staff
• Enable residents to easily find key information about services without staff intervention
• Reduce volume of telephone calls for questions/requests to less than 40% of all requests

In reaching these goals, the Town would dramatically improve customer service while creating an infrastructure that would be scalable for long-term success.

The Solution

The Town’s staff instinctively realized that the implementation of a Citizen Relationship Management (CRM) system held the keys to realizing their goals.  After a thorough analysis of possible options, they chose GORequest because:

• Its hosted approach provided a scalable and hassle-free solution that was affordable
• Its rule-based approach provided greater flexibility in automating processes
• The company’s consulting and implementation services were the most thorough to include the communications and marketing support

While many government agencies have some type of CRM software, the Town’s branding helps it stands out in the minds of residents.  Rather than a simple “customer service” link in the website, the program is branded “Queen Creek Connection” or QC Connection for short. The branding builds resident awareness and recognition, and makes the program more easily understood.