Fylde Borough Council

Sector:
Public
Requirement:
To enhance user journeys by offering first contact resolutions online
Solution:
A live chat suite complete with visitor tracking and analytics, enabling proactive engagement and optimisation
With WhosOn we were able to not only retain the same features offered by our previous supplier, but also gain additional functionality at a lower cost.

Bringing Fylde Borough Council closer to their customers

Like any local authority, Fylde Borough Council receives a large volume of diverse enquiries. Due to reliance on their website as a central information resource, the organisation needed a solution that enabled quick, cost-effective digital communications. It needed live chat software.

 

The challenge

With a complex, content-heavy website, Fylde Borough Council website visitors were struggling to find the information they required online. That meant two things: abandonment, and a reliance on telephones as an expensive access channel.

Fylde Borough Council was looking for a cost-effective live chat solution, to assist website users in finding relevant information and to answer questions quickly and efficiently. Seeking the right balance between features and price, Fylde began to research providers.

 

The solution

After a successful trial period, WhosOn was deployed on the Fylde Borough Council website. Aside from its ability to power engagement, WhosOn also helped Fylde optimise.

With its analytical capabilities, WhosOn allows common user problems to be easily and quickly identified. Fylde tracks web pages that initiate a live chat session, and each page is carefully reviewed by the content manager, often highlighting missing or unclear information.

Plus, since the software can automatically remove the chat link from the site during closed hours, it also offers an efficient way to manage visitor expectations.

 

The results

WhosOn enabled FBC to work smarter, not harder. Key results include:

  • • Reduced costs and time spent on the telephone /email
  • • Alleviated visitor frustration, with a supported online journey for web visitors
  • • An improved customer service experience for the hard of hearing and the deaf
  • • Agent multi-tasking, resulting in hidden cost-savings

 

The feedback

“Due to the volume of services offered through the council, we explored various ways of helping our website visitors find the information they required. We looked closely at other
authorities that were exploring self-service options, FAQs and knowledge base systems. However, we quickly identified that these types of systems were counterproductive, leaving website visitors still struggling to find the information they were looking for and often resulting in an email or call.

With a live chat solution we quickly identified that we could show, in a secure manner, website visitors the most relevant information on a first contact basis, which would hopefully have an impact on reducing our costs.

WhosOn enables us to not only set our standard operating hours, but also to determine individual agent working hours and chat thresholds, automatically marking them as busy or offline. The software is dynamic enough to remove the chat link from our site, so it’s a great way to automatically manage our website visitor’s expectations.

It’s also beneficial from an agent perspective to use the chat. We quickly identified that an agent has greater scope to handle multiple simultaneous enquiries. Plus, they can still conduct other daily activities at the same time such as dealing with emails or word processing. There are a number of hidden cost savings that we never envisaged as a result.

The choice for Fylde was a simple one. We had already worked with a previous live chat provider so knew what to expect, however we found costs were too high to gain a saving with our existing supplier. With WhosOn we were able to not only retain the same features, but also gain additional functionality at a lower cost."

Andrew Cain, Customer Service Manager, Fylde Borough Council