Advancing public service innovation

Sustaining a healthy residential and economic future

Set amongst the exquisite landscape of Florida’s Tampa Bay, the City of Clearwater provides a wide range of quality, cost-effective public services to meet the needs of more than 117,000 residents and 14 million visitors annually.

Front and center, the city’s Utility Customer Service Division is transforming customer and employee experiences — from the way it handles supply connections and bill payments to urgent emergency dispatch situations, such as gas leaks and water breaks.

But it wasn’t always that way. An old basic phone system and lack of effective reporting, quality assurance and recording tools did little to inspire employees.

“We had an answer rate of 47% and abandonment rate of 53%,” said Amy Sessions, Customer Service Division Manager at the City of Clearwater. “Callers had no idea of wait times. So, they’d get frustrated and drop, or phone the city manager’s office to complain. Everything was so transactional that it was almost robotic.”

Empowering people to do their best work

The first step in the turnaround was sourcing a solid cloud-based solution that would allow the City of Clearwater to start with voice and pursue a progressive roadmap for introducing digital channels, artificial intelligence (AI) assistance and automation soon after.

“We wanted to create a safe, inclusive and positive environment for employees to grow and serve citizens with passion, empathy and kindness,” said Sessions. “Our conclusion was that Genesys had the best platform to achieve that.”

In addition to optimizing routing and queue management (for both native and Spanish speakers), migrating voice services to Genesys Cloud opened a whole new world of functionality and analytics that weren’t available previously.

Features like agent auto-answer with a queue alert whisper ensure all calls are answered by the first available advisor. Likewise, with Genesys Cloud Workforce Engagement Management, supervisors can move people in and out of queues, monitor live conversations and retrieve high-quality call and screen recordings at will.

Moreover, the Utility Customer Service Division is thriving with positivity, opportunity and growth. Communication is free-flowing and department culture has permanently improved — all significantly enhancing call handling and satisfaction levels.

Delighting customers

Over a 10-month period, the city’s Utility Customer Service Division saw overall performance against service levels climb and hold steady at 85%. Out of 72,862 calls offered, an impressive 69,063 were answered, showcasing the power of Genesys Cloud.

“Within the first two weeks our answer rate surged as high as 98%, a 51% increase,” said Sessions. “That figure averaged out to 95% with a mere 3% in abandoned calls.”

In addition, average speed of answer (ASA) reduced to 53 seconds, significantly outperforming neighboring utility providers with ASA scores of five minutes or more. Callbacks, another newly introduced capability, achieved a perfect score of 100% with 2,651 requests addressed within an average response time of 48 minutes.

Greater team engagement and motivation

The enhanced performance and efficiency of Genesys Cloud has not only led to increased customer satisfaction but has also contributed to improved morale among team members, who now take pride in their ability to effectively fulfill their roles.

“Doom and gloom have been replaced with fun and joy,” concluded Sessions. “The change in employee happiness has been so apparent that it’s been noted to other departments by our city manager who receives hardly any complaint calls or emails now. We’ve also seen staff turnover drop from 40% to zero, against an industry standard of 30% to 45%.”

With the second phase of its transformational plan underway, the Utility Customer Service Division intends to leverage Genesys Cloud to improve email management and the website experience. The addition of a chatbot, another first, will help citizens get fast answers and self-serve for routine requests. Another AI-driven solution under consideration includes Genesys Cloud Agent Copilot to provide agents with real-time support so they can deliver speedier service to customers.