Selwyn District Council

14 Mar Selwyn District Council

Posted at 00:00h in Customer Stories by Synergy Enterprise Solutions 0 Comments

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How Selwyn District Council is enabling support services across departments with Synergy Enterprise Solutions and Freshworks

Selwyn District Council (SDC) serves a fast-growing district in New Zealand’s South Island. It provides essential services to the residents, such as emergency management, environmental health, food safety, roads, transport, and more. The district is home to urban and rural populations with ages across the lifespan with varying levels of digital connectivity, knowledge, usage, and capabilities. Given the diverse population, SDC understood the importance of digital inclusion for all residents. To bridge the digital divide, SDC sought to build its capability to provide flexible and accessible services that cater to the needs of all residents.

Transformation constrained by system limitations

During a major organisational transformation, the SDC Digital Services team faced several limitations with their current system. These limitations made it challenging to track productivity and performance, analyse data, and gain visibility across projects. Addressing these issues required significant time and financial costs, as any changes required coding and the involvement of a dedicated development manager. As a result, SDC began searching for a system that could help improve resource planning, track employee performance, and provide real-time assistance to both council agents and employees.

Implementing a modern solution with local support

SSDC began working with Synergy Enterprise Solutions and Freshworks to introduce a flexible, easy-to-use, and cost-effective solution that could better support its organisational transformation goals. The council was drawn to a Freshworks solution for its capability to introduce a ticketing system that could:

Be accessible by any mobile device with an online connection

Link tickets to specific problems and projects

Log, track, and report on various ongoing projects

Link change and asset management

Drive automated workflows across all the modules

Create chatbots.

To implement the system, Synergy worked with SDC to ensure all their requirements were embedded in the bespoke implementation of Freshservice. During this process, the council had access to Synergy’s local team of Freshworks specialists to assist with troubleshooting, configuration, and best-practice advice on getting the most out of the solution.

When we looked at the Freshservice solution, not only did it meet our requirements, but it also granted us access to more functionality. It opened the door for us to say, let's think of the bigger picture here, rather than just thinking about a service desk.

Andy Thompson

Digital Solutions Lead, Selwyn District Council

Opening the door to better customer and employee experiences

With the implementation of Freshservice with Synergy, SDC has made significant improvements across both the employee and customer experience.

Ticket management

Tangible behaviour change by users, with 90-95% of tickets now being lodged via the system.

Efficient ticket resolution, saving 20 to 40 seconds per ticket.

Better distribution of responsibilities within support teams.

Improved ticket queue sanitation.

Service catalogue

Streamlined workflows that direct requests to relevant teams.

Better access to information so users can self-resolve issues before they are raised.

Change management

Improved the user experience around request submissions with the ability to save and retrieve saved forms when needed.

Automated approval workflows with changes tracked in analytics.

Asset management

A more proactive approach to managing assets, with assets securely tracked in real-time and issue history captured.

Project management

Prioritisation of projects based on data in the dashboard.

Employee visibility on projects, including department responsibility, roles, and outcomes.

Analytics

Key metrics captured in reports.

Detailed organisation-wide view of projects.

Improved decision-making and resource allocation.

Marketplace

Leveraged applications from the Freshworks Marketplace to improve agent productivity and solve specific business use cases.

As part of their goal to have all their services available at the click of a button, SDC has since added services from the Marketing and Communications department.

It’s difficult to quantify the work a service team does if you don’t have a really good ticketing system that shows the increase in performance. So, organisations get value for money when they invest in a tool like Freshservice and engage local experts like Synergy Enterprise Solutions.