New Plymouth District Council

Real Service Real Time

Fix it fast

Fix it fast, keep your customers satisfied, look after your assets. New Plymouth calls it Real Service Real Time.

The gusher outside your house is clearly a burst watermain. Who you gonna call? The council, of course. If it’s in New Plymouth, you’ll start a chain of events designed to get the main fixed fast.

How it is fixed is now part of an end-to-end process brought about by a change to New Plymouth District Council’s organisational management. Service to customers, and management of council assets and contractors, has been revolutionised by the new management approach, which uses off-the-shelf technology.

Central to the success of Real Service Real Time has been the commitment and innovation of several key people in the council. Peter Hebden, Manager Geospatial and Asset Strategy, leads the project and Anthony Wilson, General Manager Community Assets, has been responsible for implementing it. The skills of ICT, engineering, customer service, policy and strategy staff have also been critical.
It means that when you call the council, your request to fix the watermain, for example, is logged into the new system by a call centre staffer. For priority jobs, such as a burst main, the council gives you a commitment to have a crew on site within the hour and to restore service within four hours. You’ll be asked if you want to be informed of progress and successful completion.

As soon as the information is entered, the seamless system informs council engineers and contractors of the problem. The contractors fix the main, and if you’ve asked for it, you’ll get a phone call to say “all done”.

Throughout the whole process, the contractors are inputting information about progress that can be tracked – not only by their own office, but also by council staff.

The system also includes assessment of claims for contracted work. Inspection, maintenance and renewal data is used to analyse and plan asset life-cycles.

The same system monitors all of New Plymouth District Council’s major assets, such as water, wastewater, stormwater and roading services. It is intended that other assets, such as parks and property, will also be monitored in the near future.
The beauty of it is that the council has been able to buy all the technology required “off the shelf”.

“The concept is quite simple,” Peter Hebden says. “You buy the programs and then join them all up so they recognise each other and talk the same language. It becomes a single beast.”

The technology, however, is only part of the means to an end. Changes to business processes and practices were also required. How they should change was determined by extensive customer research, undertaken by an independent market research company and overseen by council staff.

Customers indicated that while service was not expected to be perfect all of the time, they did expect:

• any loss of service to be minimised;
• to be informed of the commitment to action and service response.

The research led to an organisation-wide programme called Customer First, which oriented the council towards customer responsiveness with a vision of:

• “delivering sensational service”
  and an ethos of
• “we can always do better”.

A wide range of initiatives fell under the Customer First programme, including:

• internet and intranet development
• information management
• relationship management
• customer support and contact management
• process and change management (including technological change).

Staff from the council’s engineering, customer service and strategy teams worked together to establish a common and aligned view of what changes needed to occur to significantly improve service. The strategy team created a framework within the council to:

• take account of the customers’ interests and desired outcomes;
• effect identified priorities taking a sustainable development approach;
• ensure prudent stewardship through the efficient and effective use of resources;
• conduct business in an open, transparent and accountable manner with sound business practices.

Through a combination of brainstorm and workshop sessions with all staff, the expectations and desired outcomes were translated into service delivery and technical/operational objectives.

Peter says the council has been able to take giant steps towards integrated service, contractor and asset management by:

• delivering significantly better service to customers;
• providing a vehicle for efficient contract management;
• reducing asset life-cycle costs.

It’s Real Service Real Time.

For more information, see NPDC International Leading Practices case study.

Who is involved: ICT engineering customer service policy and strategy development.