The City of Utrecht Creates a Seamless Citizen Journey with Qmatic

Moving to the new municipal office, the city of  Utrecht exchanged 30+ buildings for one central location for all its municipal services, and partnered with Qmatic to provide the ultimate citizen experience.  

Utrecht Municipal Office - A new look 

Visible, findable, and accessible: this is probably the shortest description of Utrecht's new Municipal Office. An important municipal ambition has come true because of the realisation of the approximately 65,000 m building. Citizens can now go to one central location for (nearly) all municipal services. This puts a final stop to the fragmentation of what the municipality offers that was distributed over more than 30 locations. The new Municipal Office houses eleven municipal services. And the streams of visitors? They are guided in the perfect direction by Qmatic.

"We wanted to create one face for the outside world since we are one municipality. This may sound logical but it is a fairly unique concept in the world of municipalities. That we have managed to implement this ambition is something that I'm very proud of."

 

Corrine van Veldhuisen, Public Service Programme Manager 

A five star citizen journey

 As a global market leader in customer journey management, Qmatic knows that there are three factors that will convert an "ordinary" customer journey into a five-star experience. The first condition is that people must be guided quickly to the correct employee. Without fuss. And without getting lost. It is also important that employees are well informed before an appointment. Who should they be expecting? What is the status of the citizen’s file, application, or request? If this information is available immediately, it will lead to a significant time saving. Also for the customer. This leads us to the most important condition: people must be given a positive experience with regard to services. A streamlined customer journey will contribute directly to this. Using Qmatic Orchestra, Utrecht Municipal Office was provided with a user friendly, advanced, web based customer journey management platform which can be fully integrated with its other back office platforms. Creating a strong foundation for that five-star customer journey. This is how we created an extraordinary customer experience for the citizens visiting the municipal office.

1. Appointments are made quickly

Whether people want to renew their driving license or make changes to their home and want to know whether this is permitted, you always have to plan an appointment in Utrecht for these types of services. This ensures that the municipality can work more efficiently, waiting times can be minimized and citizens themselves can indicate when it is convenient to visit. Making an appointment with Qmatic Orchestra is easier and user friendlier than ever before. This is in part because of the service-specific web forms that customers can complete and send online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. After the appointment has been made, the customer will receive a confirmation email including the relevant product information. Appointments can also be completely changed online.

2. Registering is finding

People can register quickly and simply at one of the Qmatic self-service kiosks by entering their date of birth or scanning the QR code provided by email. Next, the system will refer people immediately to the correct department and employee where even the walking time to the relevant department is taken into account. Employees will receive a message on who they can expect in real time and can already prepare for the meeting. All data is presented in a clear manner thanks to the flexible screen structure in combination with the user-friendly management module. Everybody will simply know what is expected of them.

3. Please wait

Waiting times and queues can, naturally, not be excluded completely. But waiting in the new municipal office is a completely new type of waiting experience. The different waiting areas have been comfortably set up and visitors are informed about progress continuously. The Qmatic system, moreover, offers the municipality the option of providing visitors with news about municipal services (as well as other issues). All information is displayed on one central screen so that people have immediate access to the news items and call information that is relevant to them, ensuring that waiting also contributes to the customer experience.

4. Your turn

Visitors can be invited from every interview room and/or desk when it is their turn. It is not a problem to differentiate between different (groups of) visitors, for example, to avoid unexpected increasing waiting times. You can, for example, decide to give priority to people who have a simple query that can be answered quickly for a short period of time. Or vice versa. These profiles can be configured easily so that you can respond effectively to specific situations. Even greater convenience? Real-time monitoring of, for example, increasing waiting times or overruns is possible.

5. Back office integration

Since Qmatic Orchestra can seamlessly communicate with the municipal office's back office, making control information accessible in real time is not a problem in any way. This means that employees always have insight into the streams of customers including data about waiting times and the number of people waiting. Adjustments can be made quickly and efficiently should there be logistics bottlenecks. Moreover, employees can be provided with information about the nature of the support that they must offer because of the far-reaching integration. This safeguards that they are fully prepared.