Case Study
Customer Service Assessment Helps Government Address Departmental Tensions
Client Background and Overview
A mid-sized City engaged Turnkey Solutions to implement comprehensive Customer Service Training for approximately 500 employees. This initiative aimed to enhance the City’s ability to execute its five-year strategic plan by instilling a culture of world-class customer service across all departments, later expanding to encompass departmental assessments of customer service, efficiency, and broader community engagement. The scope of work included facilitating strategic meetings with City’s executive leadership and stakeholders, conducting internal and external surveys to assess perceptions of customer service; facilitating focus groups to evaluate workforce needs and improvement opportunities; engaging all stakeholders to build trust and strengthen city relationships and reputation; developing targeted training content based on data analysis; conducting market research to benchmark current practices against best practices; analyzing business processes and advising on improvements; developing an action and implementation plan based on recommendations to align department culture, operations, and customer service practices with the City’s strategic goals.
Challenges
Our assessment of the City’s customer-facing departments revealed several challenges that hindered employees from delivering the best possible customer experience to their citizens:
- Department staff did not trust City leadership to support customer-facing staff due to pre-existing tensions. This created a barrier between leadership and staff, resulting in a low level of involvement and guidance from departmental leaders.
- Unclear tasks and processes critically strained cross-departmental relations and communication. This created siloed departmental operations.
- All customer-facing departments were understaffed, putting strain and heavier workloads on present employees and creating high turnover.
- Due to the tense departmental relations and high level of turnover, employee morale and satisfaction was at an all-time low. This high amount of turnover included leadership roles, resulting in interim employees in critical leadership positions.
- Employees lacked knowledge of the City’s vision and mission, resulting in a lack of departmental alignment with the same.
In addition to the challenges revealed by our assessment, some challenges emerged concerning the engagement itself. Due to the high level of turnover in leadership positions, the scope of the engagement kept changing, altering the determined timelines and engagement deliverables indefinitely.
Solution
To address the City’s fluctuating staffing needs and optimize resource allocation, Turnkey implemented a flexible service contract offering a pool of hours for on-demand support. This approach enabled the City to efficiently address evolving departmental challenges. Additionally, in response to the aforementioned challenges, Turnkey provided the City with the following solutions:
- Citizen Survey Analysis: Turnkey staff analyzed the City’s citizen survey data to understand public perception of their customer service and opportunities for improvement. This also allowed Turnkey to identify the departments that needed the most support.
- Citizen Town Hall Updates: To continue building trust and transparency between City staff and citizens, Town hall updates were provided.
- Leadership and Staff Focus Groups: To better understand long held tensions and inhibitors to the best possible customer experience across departments, Turnkey facilitated focus group sessions with leadership and staff.
- Leadership Roundtable Discussions: In addition the focus groups, Turnkey staff held roundtable discussions with City and Department leadership to clarify strategic vision across departments and align with the City’s overall vision and mission.
- Leadership and Staff Training and Team Building: To equip the City’s workforce to resolve conflict, remove barriers to customer service excellence, and build trust, training was provided to leadership and staff members based on survey data that identified areas of need.
- Tactical Job Aids: To enhance knowledge transfer and application, staff and leadership were equipped with physical job aids that complemented the training sessions. These tools provided practical guidance for applying the content to daily tasks.
- Status and Planning Meetings: Regular planning and status meetings were conducted with the City to ensure project alignment with their customer service goals. Key milestones and project developments were reviewed with stakeholders to foster open communication and a collaborative environment.
Impact
Turnkey’s comprehensive approach to customer service transformation yielded significant improvements for the City. By identifying and addressing root causes of service delivery challenges, Turnkey was able to help the City foster a more collaborative and customer-centric culture. Overall, our services enabled the City to assess its customer service performance, provide targeted training to staff, boost employee morale, and enhance service delivery. This strengthened the City’s relationship with citizens and positioned it for long-term customer service excellence.