Case Study - Bay County Tax Collector

Overview

Bay County Tax Collectors’ four offices serve nearly 200,000 constituents every year. Each office provides a wide range of services, including drivers' licenses and vehicles, property tax, and concealed weapons permits. Cities in Bay County include Fountain, Lynn Haven, Mexico Beach, Panama City, Panama City Beach, and Youngstown.

Bay County Tax Collectors office strives to provide exceptional customer service through a mix of a talented, caring team and innovative technologies. However, with the onset of the pandemic and the need for social distancing, they realized the limitations of their current
system.

The Challenge

The organization experienced a number of challenges not supported by their existing queue management system:

• While the existing system helped manage the flow of people through the lobby, it did not adequately support appointment scheduling.
• The organization was experiencing regular system outages, and inaccurate wait time forecasts. 
• They couldn’t manage constituents in their queues or make transfers between queues, and constituents weren’t receiving text message notifications.
• The system did not support virtual appointments.
• The system lacked reports that could allow the Bay County Tax Collectors team to dig down into fundamental data and analyze trends.

Recognizing these challenges, Jessica Liard, Bay County Tax Collector's Director of Operations, searched for an effective solution.

The Solution

After seeing multiple demos and speaking with other local tax collector’s offices, Jessica found Q-Flow in a neighboring county. She knew Q-Flow had been successfully integrated by several other tax collectors and was competitively priced, further making it a clear choice.

Q-nomy's Partner ACF Technologies assigned a dedicated team to conduct fact-finding workshops and spent time in the trenches with the people who deeply understand Bay County Tax Collector’s current workflows. Shortly after that, ACF’s implementation team analyzed the information and used it to create a process improvement plan which they then took back to Bay County Tax Collector’s HQ to refine on-site.

The proposed Q-Flow solution included:

• Q-Flow Appointment Scheduling solution, including agent calendars and online booking.
• Q-Flow Advanced Queue Management, providing the highest level of business logic customization and real-time management of customers waiting in line.
• Q-Flow Online Forms and Customer Interaction Management, enabling complete two-way communications with customers before, during and after their appointments.

"Prior to implementing Q-Flow, we had another queuing system designed to manage the flow of the lobby, but not designed to allow for appointments. The pandemic shifted our needs considerably and we found ourselves continually trying to put a band-aid on a product that simply wasn’t built for the needs that had surfaced." – Jessica Liard, Director of Operations

The Results

After implementing Q-Flow, Bay County Tax Collector’s team saw a productivity boost and more flexibility around managing queues, including:

• More Accurate Wait Times - Q-Flow’s ability to accurately forecast wait times has given the Bay County Tax Collector’s team the ability to deploy additional frontline resources when wait times increase
• Customer Appointment Rescheduling - empowering customers with the ability to reschedule their appointments have proven timesaving for team members and the call center
• Reporting and Surveys - reporting on customer incidents and survey responses are available across the entire customer journey, helping staff pinpoint and address specific issues in the customer experience

Q-Flow’s ability to address the challenges and offer features like Q-Flow Survey, Remote check-in, and mapping via the Online Appointment Booking Solution made it an obvious choice. It allowed the organization to improve customer flow, increase productivity, and save everyone time, both constituents and employees.