LAS VEGAS, NV--(Marketwire - Sep 24, 2012) - KANA CONNECT 2012 - KANA Software, Inc., a global leader in customer service solutions delivered on-premise or in the cloud, and used by more than 900 organizations worldwide, including 250 government entities around the globe, today announced Winnipeg, Canada has selected the Lagan Mobile application for citizens, offering residents the ability to access information and request city services from their mobile devices anytime, anywhere.
Winnipeg will be the first Canadian government entity to leverage the Lagan Mobile to support the integration of mobile as a channel for 311 services. Soon Winnipeg citizens can self-report potholes, snow removal issues, graffiti, broken street lights and other issues from a variety of smartphone mobile devices. The issues will then seamlessly be logged in the City's Lagan 311 system and automatically routed to relevant city departments, making it easier than ever for constituents to connect with city government in near real time to streamline response times.
The capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba, Winnipeg is the seventh-largest municipality in Canada, with a population of more than 663,000. Winnipeg's 311 inquiry service provides citizens the opportunity to obtain information, or request city services at their convenience. Customer service representatives are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to address inquiries in both English and French. Adding mobile to the mix builds on the success of the Winnipeg 311 system, which has been in place since early 2009. Today, the City of Winnipeg's 3-1-1 contact center receives close to 2 million calls per year -- 5,000 to 8,000 per day -- along with 200 to 250 daily emails.
A vast majority of service issues are identified by citizens who are out and about in their communities; while they may be miles away from a computer, many have access to a mobile device. The new mobile capabilities will give Winnipeg citizens a convenient and efficient way to report issues, and the Lagan back end system enables the city to automatically and seamlessly respond to issues outside of traditional contact center business hours and communication channels in a very cost effective manner.
"Mobile has become the preferred communication channel for a vast number of constituents," said David Moody, head of product strategy, Public Sector, at KANA. "The Lagan Mobile application empowers governments to leverage mobility to deliver services and information always, anytime, anywhere. We applaud the City of Winnipeg's deployment of Lagan Mobile to support mobility for improved efficiency of service delivery and transparency."
Lagan Mobile and Open311
As local governments seek new ways to deliver better service at a lower cost, many are finding mobile applications offer an opportunity to engage with citizens to enlist them to make communities safer, cleaner and better places to live. Lagan Mobile is a cloud hosted solution that allows citizens to take advantage of many of the features of smartphones to quickly and accurately report issues such as potholes, graffiti and street issues as they move about the city and their neighborhoods. Service request details passed within the report include photos, GIS location and the specific attributes of the issue. Crucially, the report can be passed directly through to the service delivery teams without the need to re-key.
Lagan Mobile supports the transmission of photos and GPS information to support the precise description and location of the issues in a format that Winnipeg's existing Lagan 311 system can track. It also provides the built-in ability for citizens to track the resolution of their issue, without the need to call the contact center, which helps minimize call volumes. Intelligent routing, based on levels of authority and service delivery targets, ensures that issues are reported instantly to the responsible team for task execution.
About KANA Software
KANA makes every customer experience a good experience. A global leader in customer service solutions delivered on-premise or in the cloud, KANA lets organizations take complete control over customer service interactions, so they can take care of customers, while managing costs and reinforcing brand. By unifying and maintaining context for customer journeys across agent, web, social and mobile experiences, KANA solutions have reduced handling time, increased resolution rates and improved net promoter score (NPS) at more than 900 enterprises, including half of the Global 100 and more than 250 government agencies. KANA is based in Silicon Valley, California and has offices worldwide.
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