“Customer service is our top priority”

With up to 400 visitors each day, Perth Magistrate’s Court needed to do something about their flow of customers. With the introduction of Customer Flow Management (CFM) visitors can now wait comfortably without losing their place in the queue. Management can keep waiting times at a minimum and use the statistic provided by the system to prove they are efficient. A bonus has been that the Qmatic system has proven useful for training. 

BACKGROUND
Perth Magistrate’s Court is the largest court in Western Australia and has the busiest registry in the state. Last year the Civil and Criminal Registries merged and amalgamated services. The move was part of a larger restructuring and both departments were relocated to join services at the Central Law Courts building in Perth. Before the change, customers had to queue in front of the registry advisors and the staff’s only option was serve them in order of appearance.

Customers are often members of local law firms coming in to lodge documents in civil law cases. Other customers come in for a variety of services such as taking out restraining orders, enquiring about witness proceedings or to pay a fine.

In order to manage the flow of customers whilst making the organisation more efficient the management decided to introduce CFM from Qmatic. The new registry is now an efficient one stop shop that caters for all court customers.

“We looked at other public sector organisations and found that the Department of Transport were using Qmatic,” said Greg Fawcett, Registry Manager. “As a public sector organisation we have to be totally transparent in our customer service and we felt Qmatic would help us achieve that.”

The registry also needed statistics to keep track of their service times, customer volumes and waiting times.

The department is still undergoing changes. At the moment the Criminal and Civil Registries deal with their own enquiries separately but they will soon be trained to multi task so all staff will be able to handle all enquiries

“Qmatic will be useful then,” said Greg. “We use it for training regularly by having one counter position dealing only with one service, for example restraining orders. That way the person being trained can focus on one task only. When they’re fully trained on that service, we can add for example payments and they can start taking on more tasks.”

HOW IT WORKS
As customers come in, they walk up to a customer service point, offering them 9 service options. Two of these have a second tier, so when a customer clicks on them, a new window opens with more options in that category. The customers select the service they need, and the system issues them a ticket, placing them in a virtual queue.

Instead of queuing in front of the advisors, visitors can now sit down and wait in a comfortable waiting area. They are called by their numbers, ensuring total anonymity. They can see the next number called on the two position displays over the counters.

“We are a customer service business,” said Greg Fawcett (pictured below). “Qmatic helps us focus on our service.”

When the customer is being served, the Qmatic system tracks the transaction time and also shows how long they had to wait before being served. Greg can run reports on number of customers visiting each day, waiting times per service, and which service has the highest number of visitors.

The management screen shows current waiting times for all customers and there’s an alarm that alerts Greg if the waiting time exceeds the preset 20 minutes. He can then immediately change the staff’s calling options ensuring they call the next customer from the longest virtual queue.

Management benefits
The statistics provided by the system are used for reporting to the Executive Manager and ultimately the Department of the Attorney General.

“We use the statistics to prove that we are efficient. The staff can see how many transactions they handle each day. I go through the reports at our team meetings so that everyone can see how we are doing,” Greg said.

The management also use the statistics to track waiting times, and to see which services people wait for the longest.

“We use it to move staff around and ensure timely service for all customers. If we so choose, we can see statistics for individual staff members.”

Staff benefits
For the staff, the system is valuable in proving their efficiency. “They know they are working hard, and now we can prove it,” Greg said. “Also, they know what to expect if they have only one or a few services allocated to them.”

Qmatic can also be used to allocate customers to a particular staff member who has skills in that specific area.

“The system is useful because I have information at hand at any given time, regarding our customer service. Also we can make changes to priorities throughout the day and be flexible enough to change our service options on the customer service point with minimal time frames.”

Customer service is our top priority and CFM is useful in order to help us achieve excellent customer service.”

Customer benefits
The customers have seen many changes and improvements in the service since the introduction of CFM; the most obvious being able to wait comfortably while without losing their place in the queue.

“It’s also useful for law firms, for example when they lodge documentation in civil matters,” said Greg. “We offer them the option of taking a ticket and wait, or they can use the Qmatic system to select the “over night” option. This means they can hand in their documents there and then, but come back the next day to collect their paperwork and pay their lodgment fees, not having to wait.”

Perth Magistrates Court Registry use 1 Vision customer service point with 9 position options, 2 of which have sublevels. The system offers 12 counter positions and up to 10 are used on any one day. The registry use Q-WIN with 2 LED displays showing ticket number called for all services categories. There is a voice function for calling forward and an alert option when waiting times exceed preset limits. Management run reports on customer waiting times, customer volumes and transaction times. Further functions include individual transaction times which can be used for efficiency improvements.