Across Europe cities are facing a wide range of challenges as businesses and citizens demand better, more efficient and more flexible services. This guide provides a step by step introduction for cities and municipalities who want to create customer contact centres.
This guide was produced by partners in the Smart Cities project to show what cities need to do to set up a customer contact centre. The guide includes practical examples and case studies that highlight the experiences and lessons learned by staff in seven municipalities from the North Sea region of Europe. The contributors are all currently working to improve customer services in their cities, and the guide is written for the growing number of people who want to do the same in their city.
The issues that cities faced when trying to set up customer contact centres (and the factors which affected their success) were remarkably similar across the cities that contributed. The need to put customers first, and to develop a demand-driven approach to delivering services, often requires significant changes in how municipalities work. This is a transformation that many municipalities have struggled with.
Once established, city customer contact centres will need to continue to develop and adapt as their host organisations, their customers, and the services they provide change. For examples of how other cities have handled this continuous change, look at the results from Like! and OpeningUP on developing and delivering smarter services.