With unstructured data in silos around the council, managing customer enquiries about council resources and services, from roading to public places, street cleaning and repairs to noise complaints, is complex. It’s challenging to collate multiple customer concerns about a physical issue in their immediate neighbourhood or surroundings into a single incident so they can be responded to effectively.
For example, when a customer rings to report a pothole, a broken bench in a nearby park, or an unpleasant smell from a local café, it can be difficult for your service team to determine whether eight other residents have also reported the same issue.
Even identifying precisely where the issue is can be problematic. Given the resident's viewpoint, the pothole could be:
- Outside no. 8 Alpha Street
- Diagonally opposite no. 11 Alpha Street
- On the corner of Alpha and Beta Streets
The ubiquitous park bench may be on the north or east side of the park - or somewhere in between, and there may be three cafés near Woolworths on Delta Street.
So, when the required council service is logged and approved, the response to fixing it can be overkill.
Multiple support crews, each with vehicles and equipment, could potentially turn up to fill what turns out to be one pothole, repair one of thirteen benches in the park, or investigate that mysterious café odour, leaving concerned citizens critical and complaining (with some justification) about their rates paying for poorly managed services.
What compounds the issue is that the typical council service desk must work with several data sets (contacts, locations, buildings, organisations), each likely to be captured in an independently maintained and siloed council or government solution.