I’m sure that at one time or another, we’ve all played “telephone,” whether we meant to or not. “Telephone” is a game in which one person tells another something, and that person tells another, and so on. After several people have done this, you compare the final message with what the original person said to see how close it is.
A form of this still exists today. According to Oracle, there are growing inconsistencies between the information provided on the Web, what call center representatives tell members of the public, and what agencies publish in documents and communicate in email messages. The more sources of information there are, the more varied the answers become.
It appears that information specialists are spending a great deal more of their time on editorial tasks, such as synchronizing content delivered through call centers, the Internet, and email. Unfortunately, this leaves very few resources available for developing new information that addresses constituents’ concerns.
Oracle believes it has created a better approach by building a constituent-facing contact center organized around a shared knowledge base. In this regard, all information would be uniform and consistent. Oracle believes it is essential to develop the content once, manage it systematically, and distribute it across the various channels used for constituent communications.
The solution Oracle has developed is Oracle RightNow, its cloud service. By unifying Internet, social media, and call center experiences and providing a cloud-based solution, a company can achieve consistent, cross-channel solutions. This, in turn, enables a government agency to better serve its constituents, reduce costs, and improve effectiveness. Oracle Service Cloud provides a single source for all information an agency distributes, which is stored centrally and indexed by a predefined set of keywords.
This is an ongoing process. The way in which information from the shared knowledge base is used and accessed is constantly monitored. This means that the agency's information specialists can make adjustments and updates all at once. Once the changes are made, they are distributed across all channels, including mobile devices, and all information remains consistent.
We live in a world where just about everyone is always connected, whether through a mobile device or while sitting at a desk using a computer. Companies are allowing employees to bring their own devices (BYOD), so this group is accessing information from various locations throughout the day on a variety of devices. Everyone has access to information via the Internet, which must remain accurate and consistent.
The following are three examples of public agencies that deployed Oracle Service Cloud to meet their expectations;
- The Illinois Department of Revenue is able to answer hundreds of common questions online 24 hours a day and has reduced its email volume by 83 percent. The system paid for itself within six months.
- The U.S. Air Force raised its constituent satisfaction levels from “poor” to “very good”:
- The average time taken to respond to constituent inquiries decreased from 20 to 2 minutes
- Weekly use of the online knowledge base increased from 180,000 to 2 million hits
- The agency consolidated 21 personnel programs into the new web-based knowledge management service
- Better program management led to significant cost reductions
- U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports a 98 percent self-service rate on its website. Agency staff tracks trends related to hot topics through interactive dashboards. Furthermore, CBP personnel gather feedback from the public and respond directly to comments and recommendations through the contact center.
A government agency requires both performance and budget results. Deploying a contact center that serves the public leads to greater effectiveness and substantial cost savings.
The groups that can truly benefit from this type of scenario are companies that initially created a website about 10 years ago. In most cases, although changes have been made, the structure of these first-generation websites has remained the same. This makes them difficult to maintain and costly. Unfortunately, since people have come to rely on these sites, they need to remain online.
As a cloud-powered solution, Oracle Service Cloud is an environment that any agency can quickly adopt within a predictable timeframe and, more importantly, within an affordable budget. There are no upfront capital expenditures required to procure the underlying infrastructure and enterprise software systems. An agency budgets for and funds the service as an operating expense, which makes it much easier to maintain.
Oracle believes that building and maintaining a successful knowledge base no longer has to be a long, drawn-out, and complicated process. Specialists are no longer needed—people who would take as much time as possible to gather your information and organize it into a usable database. Oracle Consulting has the tools, resources, and expertise to help a public agency organize its information for a constituent-facing contact center. This can be accomplished in a matter of weeks, maintained on an ongoing basis, and deliver content across multiple channels.
Edited by Maurice Nagle
