Jun 26

Written by: CivicView News
Thursday, 26 June 2008 

Hurstville City Council has improved its customer service standards by developing a best practice system for processing and analysing customer requests.

According to the council, in the first nine months of using the system, the average time taken to action a request dropped from 264 days to 17 days.

The metropolitan Sydney council’s “work orders” system has enabled the council to: identify major community issues; graphically monitor performance; improve planned maintenance; report trends to key stakeholders; engage the community in customer service feedback surveys; and be pro-active in scheduling service delivery.

A number of councils have expressed an interest in using Hurstville’s work orders system, with at least one council adapting the technology for its own use.

The council, which processes the work orders through the ‘CivicView’ core computer software system, believes components of the work order system, such as the graphical reporting and trend analysis, are also transferable to councils who do not use the CivicView system.

The council’s work orders system operates on the council’s intranet, where the council officer responding to a request uses the web-based system to create a work order, including details of the issue to be addressed, location, the urgency of the issue, and the contact details of the person making a request.

Once this data is entered, an email containing a link to the original work order is sent to the person responsible for processing the work order. Changes to the status of the work order are updated on the council’s intranet system.

The information on the system is collated monthly and presented to management, who can use the information to change current council work practices, such as altering street-sweeping routes to ensure more efficient use of resources while completing a number of work order requests.

The council has introduced customer service surveys to measure community satisfaction with the council’s service delivery. The surveys record an overall customer satisfaction rate of 60% in December 2006, which rose to 90% in May, 2007.

For more information, contact Hurstville City Council’s Administration Business Systems Co-ordinator, Nass Jelwan on (02) 9330 6098.