Brent Council - Town Hall One Stop Shop
Date: 6th September 2006
One Stop Shops were introduced to local government departments, to provide a solution to the disparate nature of services that are offered by local councils. Rather than having people go to the centre of town for their council tax queries, and then to the next town for benefits queries, the government made provisions for there to be a One Stop Shop where all queries can be dealt with at one point. One Stop Shops are the first port of call when contacting the council, with any query, as they cover a wide range of services from one contact point.
The Situation
Brent Council covers a large geographical area, and has six One Stop Shops located in convenient areas across the borough. Lonsto systems are used in each One Stop Shop, to varying effect. The Town Hall, located by WembleyPark tube station, has a very busy One Stop Shop that deals with hundreds of daily visitors.
The system in place before the One Stop Shop renovation was manual tickets. Once in possession of a ticket, customers were unsure of which service point to go to. Tickets were called forward aloud, by each customer service representative. This proved especially problematic for older customers, and visitors with hearing difficulties. Once the ticket number had been called two or three times with no response, their place was then lost.
Why Lonsto?
A number of recommendations were received from other local authorities when BrentTown Hall decided to implement a queuing system within its establishment. The positive feedback from word of mouth was followed up further through research conducted on the Internet and then finally through contacting one of Lonsto’s sales team.
With all the information gathered, along with Lonsto’s reputation and experience within providing solutions for local authorities, it confirmed, that Lonsto were the right company for solving BrentTown Halls queuing dilemma.
Implementation
The Lonsto engineers talked through the needs of the One Stop Service and surveyed the needs of the visitors for a coherent multi-queue system, so that the system was specifically tailored for the Town Hall’s layout and services. The system was installed at a very opportune time, as the installation then was done in tandem with the scheduled refurbishment programme. Once the installation was completed, it was realised that the main display was too low, and had to be raised for better vision for visitors.
The introduction of Lonsto’s system coincided with the change in services on offer, and also with a refurbishment. The number of desks was increased from four to five, with one desk being made a dedicated “document” desk, where members of the public can hand in their documents to support claims for certain council departments, like planning or housing departments.
The document desk is used as a quick queue, to support the other advisors, and to speed up queues. This is where customers hand in documents quickly, to support claims for housing benefit or planning applications. After surveying the reason behind the visits, the council was able to respond to the visitors’ requirement of a faster moving queue for dropping off papers used for evidence for housing, benefits, housing repairs, education, and social care.
Going Live
There was a period of adjustment for the visitors to the One Stop Shop, to educate them as to the new system. Regular visitors made comment about the organization of the new system, noting the transformation of the layout, and how it improved services.
The Lonsto system helped the Town Hall One Stop Shop to manage their queues better. It aided with their scheduling, allocating the right people to the relevant queues, and ensuring that employees can be reallocated according to the changing queues and volumes of customers. The statistics gathered can also be converted into informative and useful graphs to represent how targets are being met. The queue management system helped visitors to know where they are going when they walk through the doors.
Immediate Benefits
Town Hall One Stop Shop manager Veronica Williams says the PCQMS system is “the best tool I’ve ever had!” She is able to see form the software which shows on her screen in her office, how many people are waiting in each dedicated queue. If there is a particular busy queue, then she can reallocate another customer team member on to that queue, to help deplete that area.
She can also see from her system the amount of time that each team member spends with each visitor. The average query can take anything up to twenty minutes, but if the interview takes longer, then she can see this, and go over to the desk to ensure that everything is in order, and whether she can be of assistance.
The PCQMS system also allows Mrs Williams to generate reports which can be used by the managers of Brent Council, to ensure that Brent are meeting their efficiency targets. These reports show the volume of visitors, the waiting times, and the service times. It shows which services receive the most visitors and what time the majority of the visitors arrive.
Once the system was installed, the customer service team had to be trained to operate the call forward keypads. The Town Hall One Stop Shop has a Saturday rota, when they work at another One Stop Shop at Brent House. There is a Lonsto system already in place there, so most employees were already familiar with the system. It was important that the keypad was used properly to ensure the correct and accurate statistics were captured.
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