ABOUT Lewisham Homes
Lewisham Homes is an enterprising, not-for-profit organisation, set up to improve housing in the borough. As well as managing 19,000 homes on behalf of Lewisham Council, they operate their own maintenance company, build new homes, and find valuable ways to invest in the local community. They're proud to be 100% focused on Lewisham and aim to make a real difference in the lives of the residents and communities living and working in the borough.
The Challenge
Offering housing services to the local community from a single service centre located in the Old Town Hall, near Catford Station in London, Lewisham Homes offers a range of services regarding rent, tenancy management, repairs, environmental, new homes and much more.
The walk-in centre is integral to the services offered to customers and ensuring a professional experience was part of the vision of Lewisham Homes when approaching ACF to assist.
With any centrally located office, a high footfall of customers naturally exists and at times may have experienced higher wait times than Lewisham Homes would have liked, which left some customers with a lessened customer experience.
Many customers waiting was also increasing the demand and pressure on staff and could inhibit the delivery of the best customer service. As queues build up, with no queue management system in place, the atmosphere could naturally move towards frustration with some customers, which then further added pressure to the service staff.
Lewisham Homes customer service management team also needed a unified system that would allow them to easily see the number of customers waiting and served throughout a period of time.
Lewisham Homes also experienced a spike in traffic on certain days of the week, and the month, which would further support the need to have a system to control the sporadic rising footfall.
The Solution
ACF worked with Lewisham Homes customer service centre management team to implement a Queue Management solution, using the Q-Flow platform, that would achieve the following key goals:
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Enable customers to join a queue easily, by selecting the service they need at the kiosk
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Using screens and audio, direct customers to staff for service
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Empower staff to control each case and the queues in general
WELCOME KIOSK & PRINTED TICKETS
Kiosks are added to the service centre entrance to capture all walk-in customers and help them join a queue for the service they require.
The customer is given a printed ticket with a unique customer number e.g. ‘HT 101’. This sets the expectation and gives the customer a feeling of a personal ticket number.
DIGITAL SIGNAGE SCREENS
Whilst the customer is waiting, they can visually see the progress of their wait time by tracking their unique ticket number on the multiple digital signage screens located around the service centre.
The screen designs are fully aligned to the Lewisham Homes branding, and can provide other information on products, services, and news to the waiting customers.
CUSTOMER SERVICE TEAM USER INTERFACE
The customer service staff have been empowered with the Q-Flow web-based user interface which is simple-to-use, yet functionality rich.
Staff were upskilled on how they could perform such tasks as:
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Viewing all waiting customers and the services they are waiting to receive
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Seeing the live wait times for each customer, allowing them to manage wait times
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The ability to call forward customers that have been waiting a long time
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The ability to call customers forward with a single click with the system prioritizing the order automatically
MANAGEMENT USER INTERFACE
The service centre managers are able to:
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View a series of useful management reports
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See a real-time view of all waiting customers across all queues
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Take immediate actions to move customers between queues or open new queues
LOCAL HOSTING
The solution is hosted locally on the Lewisham Council’s servers and network making for a quick installation and simple local environment support.
SUPPORT
ACF Technologies support Lewisham Homes with the system and have regular account meetings to ensure the system evolves with their needs.
The Results
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Reduction in average wait time for customers due to quicker service processing
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Improved experience created by keeping customers updated using the display screens
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Increased ease of calling and serving customers
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Valuable insights gained using the reporting suite
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Staff engagement and performance increases seen around the service centre
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Increased overall customer satisfaction
