MILTON — Since taking office in 2009, Stan Colie Nichols and the Santa Rosa County Tax Collector’s office have been at the forefront of technology in comparison to driver license and county offices throughout the state of Florida.
"As a mid-sized county, we are constantly looking for ways to maximize our budget and improve the experience for our residents," said Nichols. "We feel that our innovation and implementation of our new Virtual Customer Service Representative not only helps to further that vision for our office, but could possibly help revolutionize offices throughout our state."
The Challenge:
Circumstances sometimes caused us to deploy personnel from one office to another.
"Our clerks would then spend valuable time driving and setting up at the new branch. Between the travel, and in some cases overtime, this method was simply inefficient," said Nichols.
The Idea:
Nichols speculated that, given technology’s advancements over the years, there had to be a way to utilize existing staff and infrastructure to solve this problem.
"Our intent was to more efficiently use the talent and personnel we currently have available to better serve our customers quicker and more efficiently," he said.
The Solution:
The Santa Rosa Tax Collector had various systems in place for "Phase 1" of the project that weren’t designed to talk to each other. When they set out to find a new technology to better support their needs, they settled on an all-in-one solution. Specifically, video conferencing kiosks that would allow taxpayers to see, hear and chat with a live county employee based in a central location.
"Retaining human interaction was a high priority when we implemented this solution," said Nichols. "We pride ourselves on personal customer service in our office and wanted to remove any cold, technical aspect of the customer interaction. This also helps to avoid any confusion between the customer and our employee that a non-face-to-face solution may present."
These kiosks allow for an employee to be in one office, yet serve customers in any of the other three branches of the Santa Rosa Tax Collector’s office, wherever the need is the greatest.
"As a customer, you can walk up to one of our kiosks, push a button, and you’re instantly connected to our customer service representative in a central location," said Nichols. "We are currently averaging 50-75 transactions per day on the ‘Virtual CSR’ and these are customers who are at various branches that aren’t having to sit and wait in our lobby. This is allowing for shorter wait times in all of our branch offices and is helping to better accomplish our main goal, providing the best customer service to all citizens of Santa Rosa County in the most courteous, professional, innovative and cost-effective matter."
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: The Virtual Customer Service Representative innovation