Overview

Previously known as Canberra Connect, Access Canberra is considered ‘the front door’ for government services and transactions – upholding a range of regulatory protections in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).

More specifically, Access Canberra:

  • Supports a safe and liveable city by ensuring regulatory protections across a wide range of industries
  • Strives to give back time to the people of Canberra by providing connected, easy, and simple services regardless of the channel – online, by phone and in-person.

Given the advancements in technology and the evolving demands of people, delivering a rewarding outcome in a more convenient way continues to be a challenge for many government organizations like Access Canberra.

Being a government agency delivering comprehensive services for countless people, businesses and other partner agencies, their highest priority was to create a positive customer experience. However, to achieve this, they required accurate customer data to make well-informed decisions.

So, they started to proactively search for holistic solutions to improve both their staff and customer experience, while enhancing their real-time data collection, analysis and interpretation capabilities.

 “Our staff had to stand beside the ticket kiosk and become a ‘kiosk gatekeeper’ to ensure each customer had a ticket, instead of actually performing the role of a concierge”

“Since it was difficult for us to gather real-time data, we had trouble improving our service delivery, making strategic and informed decisions and most importantly, responding to the changing needs of our customers.”

Jennie Gannon (Director, Service Centers Access Canberra).

The Challenge

As an essential full-service provider, long queues and a full waiting area were just some of the normal scenarios seen in Access Canberra (then Canberra Connect) branches on a typical day. Although a ticketing system was in place, it had limited functionality and was not being utilized in the most efficient way which meant the concierge staff had less time to fulfil their usual duties of greeting customers, ensuring people had the correct paperwork and answering questions on the go.

Another challenge was the limited supply of customer data obtained from the previous provider’s system. This hampered their ability to make informed decisions on staffing numbers, service offerings, service timings and justifying their need for increased funding. In addition, Access Canberra’s previous provider was located offshore. Due to the time difference, this meant hour or day-long downtimes whenever their ticketing system encountered any issues before it could be serviced and resume normal operation again. This caused them serious delays, cost them significant amounts of money and was detrimental to the level of service they provided – affecting not just their customers but also their staff members.

The Goal

As part of the transition from Canberra Connect to Access Canberra, which included bringing on additional business areas, the government agency identified the need for a more modern, digital and customer-first solution that would cater for the increasing demands of their branches and customers.

During the research stage, it was realized that other industries and government agencies had technology-driven service solutions in place that ensured consistency, reliability and the capturing of relevant data. Access Canberra visited the sites of these other government agencies and saw the potential of their Q-Flow queueing systems.

It was at this point when they decided they required a smart and comprehensive queue management solution that would address their specific challenges, to:

  • Improve customer data collection and feedback
  • Manage long customer queues
  • Reduce wait times
  • Support staff productivity
  • Maximize efficiencies

“We saw the huge potential of the queue management system that our government agency counterpart had, and we wanted to implement something similar here at Access Canberra.”

Jennie Gannon

The Solution

Upon learning about Access Canberra’s pain points and goals, Q-nomy's local partner & reseller NEXA took a consultative service design-led approach by assessing their current process and the opportunities available for improvement.

By planning, coordinating and optimizing Access Canberra’s operations, the service design process determined exactly how we could enhance both their customer and staff experience. It became clear that technology was the foundation of the future for service-based organizations like Access Canberra, however, with the constantly evolving trends and expectations in service delivery, it’s hard for agencies to keep up.

Q-nomy's Queue Management Solution: Q-Flow

Q-Flow is a powerful software solution designed for viewing, planning and managing customer journeys. This software solution integrated appointment scheduling, queue management, business process management and customer interactions management, which, together, delivered the optimal customer experience, operational efficiency and close support that Access Canberra just wasn’t getting from their previous software provider.

“Q-nomy’s modular platform is robust, secure and scalable which enabled them to customize a solution that met their immediate and future needs. Since they were transitioning from Canberra Connect to Access Canberra, we’re proud that our comprehensive software solutions smoothly integrated with their existing core systems,”

Bill Thompson, NEXA Account Director

The Outcome

The initial rollout of Q-Flow with NEXA commenced in a pilot location, which was the Gungahlin branch and only took a timely 6 months. Following such a successful and well-accepted rollout, Q-nomy's comprehensive queue management solution was then implemented across all Access Canberra branches, taking into account the diverse needs, demographics and service offerings of each specific branch.

Since then, Access Canberra has become more efficient in terms of providing excellent service to their customers through the collection and analysis of real-time data and has been able to significantly reduce their wait times.

Q-Flow also allowed them to gather customer feedback through our feedback pedestals and customer satisfaction data across all of their six service centers. The system has also allowed Access Canberra to have a comprehensive dashboard which not only displays real-time stats across their six branches but also allows their customers to see how long the wait time is so they can plan when the best time is to visit.

“Through Q-nomy's queue management system, we’re able to gather important data which greatly helped us in making decisions, have confidence in making those decisions and potentially helping justify our requests for increased funding,”

Jennie Gannon