{"id":1524,"date":"2020-10-13T00:00:08","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T00:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/contentguru.builtbytoast.uk\/?post_type=resource&p=1524"},"modified":"2026-02-19T16:11:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T16:11:13","slug":"the-changing-face-of-citizen-engagement","status":"publish","type":"resource","link":"https:\/\/www.contentguru.com\/en-us\/resources\/blogs\/the-changing-face-of-citizen-engagement\/","title":{"rendered":"The Changing Face of Citizen Engagement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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Blogs<\/div>\n

The Changing Face of Citizen Engagement<\/h1>\n
Published: October 13th 2020<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/section>\n\n\n\n\n\n
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On Thursday 10th September,\u00a0Martin Taylor<\/strong>,\u00a0Deputy CEO and Head of Public Sector for Content Guru<\/strong>, met virtually with\u00a0Simon Gunnel<\/strong>,\u00a0Operational Manager for Sheffield City Council<\/strong>, to deliver a webinar on the changing face of citizen engagement in the public sector.<\/p>\n

Coronavirus has turned the world of citizen communications on its head. However, the pandemic has merely been a catalyst for changes that were already on the horizon for many organizations. In both the public and private sectors, side-lined schemes to allow employees to work from home, or to open up new digital communication channels, suddenly became life-or-death issues in the face of COVID-19.<\/p>\n

Sheffield City Council is one of the largest local authorities in the UK. Providing approximately 550 services to its 518,000+ residents, Sheffield employs over 8,000 staff, based across hundreds of different worksites. The council receives over 6 million resident calls a year, 2 million of which are processed through its central contact center. Simon, who has worked for Sheffield City Council for 15 years, noted how the sudden move to homeworking dramatically complicated collaboration between the council\u2019s various teams, a theme that resonated with the audience.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n \n <\/section>\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Time to go home<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Before the webinar began, Content Guru asked attendees to take a survey about their organization\u2019s response to the coronavirus crisis.\u00a0Over half of the public sector participants marked \u2018managing multiple communications channels whilst working from home\u2019 as the pandemic\u2019s greatest professional challenge<\/strong>. \u2018The immediate need to implement homeworking\u2019 came in second place with 28% of the audience\u2019s vote. Addressing these results, Martin commented that both of these issues can be resolved by moving to a cloud-based system for citizen engagement. A cloud Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) solution allows an organization to immediately scale up their services to handle spikes in demand. It can also enable the unification of all communication channels into a single interface. This interface can be accessed from any internet-enabled device, enabling agents to work from home without upheaval.<\/p>\n

\"Solutions<\/p>\n

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Head in the clouds<\/strong><\/h3>\n

For organizations that don\u2019t have the flexibility of cloud, the disruption of Coronavirus is set to continue into the foreseeable future, with staggered lockdowns on the horizon. When the Coronavirus pandemic hit the UK, Sheffield City Council was already in the process of streamlining its IT equipment to facilitate homeworking, as well as moving to a cloud-based CX solution with the help of Content Guru. These changes allowed the council to deftly dodge the considerable upheaval that many other public sector organizations faced during the crisis. A cloud-based system also gave Sheffield the ability to provision new services rapidly, and adapt its front-line citizen communications quickly to last-minute government changes, all whilst staff were working from home.<\/p>\n


\nThe drive for digital<\/strong><\/h3>\n

During the webinar, the audience were asked to complete a survey on the tools they found most useful in handling the Coronavirus pandemic. With a landslide victory, 79% of participants voted for \u2018digital communication channels\u2019. Handling citizen contacts through digital channels can play a huge role in reducing queue wait times, and opening up the possibility for automation and self-service.\u00a025% of Sheffield City Council\u2019s citizen communications are carried out via its live online presence<\/strong>, the development of which was a major part of the council\u2019s 2020 CX strategy. Through its automated online service, Sheffield are able to receive and field applications for business grants, and requests for community care packages, as well as push out proactive messaging to citizens. Martin noted that, with the implementation of a chatbot, organizations can entirely automate many relatively complex questions, allowing time-conscious citizens to have their queries resolved rapidly.<\/p>\n

\"ESG<\/p>\n

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Making the first move<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Making proactive contact with citizens can vastly reduce call wait times. Martin mentioned that, when Content Guru implemented proactive SMS messaging for clients in the electricity sector,\u00a0the number of calls coming into their contact center dropped by an astonishing 50%<\/strong>. This functionality is now more important than ever for public sector organizations. Due to the pandemic, many local authorities have suddenly found that their list of vulnerable citizens has grown to staggering proportions. Ensuring that these citizens continue to receive priority service requires intelligent contact routing, advanced CRM functionality, and targeted proactive outreach tools. Simon commented on how Content Guru has helped Sheffield City Council to transition away from a legacy, on-premise CRM solution, to a new, cloud-based CRM functionality. The integration of this advanced citizen knowledge management and CRM tool into Sheffield\u2019s communications estate was completed during lockdown, and allows Sheffield to ensure that they can provide vulnerable citizens with the care they need.<\/p>\n

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Embracing a post-pandemic world<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Martin asserted that, as consumers, citizens, and employees, our communications expectations have evolved. As professionals, those that have enjoyed the improved work-life balance offered by pandemic-induced homeworking will not be willing to return to an office-based 9 to 5. Enabling flexible homeworking in the long term will allow organizations to hang on to their best people. As consumers, citizens have become used to the exceptionally high standards of customer service provided to us by leading private sector companies. These same standards and now being applied to public sector organizations, from whom citizens expect immediate service, on any channel, at any time.\u00a0The public sector must adapt their CX offerings to meet these demands, and implement technology that will allow them to keep up.<\/strong>\u00a0Over the next few months, Sheffield City Council will be leading this charge by piloting a new Natural Language Processing (NLP) deployment. This form of AI will allow Sheffield to automate voice-based enquiries, without the jarringly-artificial cog-whirring of an IVR.<\/p>\n

During the webinar, attendees were asked which AI innovation they would be most interested in implementing in their CX estate. The results were relatively evenly split. Chatbots took the lead with 44% of the vote, NLP came in a close second with 39%, whilst on-demand video consultation functionality finished last with 17%.\u00a0Artificial Intelligence is the future of citizen engagement, and its applications are varied<\/strong>.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n \n <\/section>\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Want to find out more about how to revolutionize your CX estate with AI?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Read More About Artificial Intelligence<\/a><\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/section>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The public sector must adapt their CX offerings to meet demands, and implement technology that will allow them to keep up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":5207,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"inline_featured_image":false},"resource_industry":[52],"resource_topic":[46],"resource_type":[5],"resource_folder":[72],"class_list":["post-1524","resource","type-resource","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","resource_industry-government","resource_topic-lead-in-cx-and-ai","resource_type-blogs"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Changing Face of Citizen Engagement - English - USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The public sector must adapt their CX offerings to meet demands, and implement technology that will allow them to keep up.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.contentguru.com\/en-us\/resources\/blogs\/the-changing-face-of-citizen-engagement\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Changing Face of Citizen Engagement - 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