sponsored by Asidua
Presented to the local authority or central government department that can demonstrate improvements in call handling, customer complaints management, staff training and staff retention.

Winner: Surrey County Council
In 2010 Surrey County Council developed its ‘Delivering the Customer Promise’ training, which is in the process of being rolled out across the organisation. So far 209 have attended the course and delegates have rated the course highly. The training is interactive and focuses on the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills of customer service - managing customer expectations, how to design and deliver customer-driven rather than governance-driven processes, and how to empower and encourage teams to deliver excellent customer service. Raising awareness on how slicker, bureaucracy free processes can enhance customer service has resulted in savings of over £500,000 across the organisation. There has been a significant reduction in ‘chaser’ calls and cost per contact has reduced to 79p to 49p.

sponsored by Clement Clarke Communications
Presented to the Local Authority that can present the most innovative use of call centre technology in order to increase call handling levels and improve conditions for the workforce.

2011 Winner: South Staffordshire Council
The dilemma for South Staffordshire Council was how to improve the service by using technology whilst not increasing cost. The decision was made to develop an in-house customer queuing and handling system. Whilst the council does not employ any developers, existing internal, home grown skills were utilised. A technical assistant whose main responsibilities are hardware and systems support used his self developed skills to write a software system to support customer queuing and handling. The assistant went through the entire software development lifecycle. Not only did the system improve upon the previous software that was running but it also saved the council a considerable amount of money in licensing and maintenance costs.

sponsored by Box Technologies
Presented to the local authority or central government department that has implemented a mobile strategy that can demonstrate either: benefits to citizens through increased access to services, or; benefits to the organisation through increased efficiencies.

2011 Winner: Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council - SARAH Mobile working initiative
SARAH was developed in an inclusive manner led by Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council in partnership with CACI and in consultation with home carers, unions and IT staff to design a product that would allow the removal of paper timesheets. The homecare management software solution is deployed on smart phones allowing Carers to download their specific service user schedules whilst also providing them with contextual information and prompts for each visit. As changes occur, these can be relayed immediately to the carer and vice versa.

sponsored by MLL Telecom
Presented to the Local Authority or Central Government Department that can demonstrate an effective use of a new or emerging communication technology (eg VoiceoverIP, RFID, SMS).

2011 Winner: Kent County Council - Audio Conferencing
Innovation and digital technology plays a key role in the way the Kent County Council delivers services and in supporting its people to work more flexibly. In order to reduce travel-related costs and lower its carbon emission, it has recently implemented BT MeetMe, a hosted audio conferencing service that only requires a fixed or mobile phone for access, enabling virtual meetings with up to 40 participants. No prior booking is required and conferences can be established in the time it takes to dial the local access number. Each account has two PIN numbers, one for the organiser of the call and the other for the participants. To use the service delegates simply pick up the phone, dial the access number, enter their PIN, and announce their name. Once the organiser dials in all the parties are connected together in a virtual meeting. The system is allowing regular and ad hoc meetings to be quickly and easily scheduled, enabling group conversations to take place without travelling.