Saving with Online Course Booking and Electronic Administration

The citizen's story

Your children are pestering you to let them go on some activity courses the local council is running over the holidays. They went on some last year and really enjoyed them - but you're not sure you can face the hassle you went through previously trying to book them.

Last year, you got the kids off to bed and then took a look at the council's website to find out more. The information was sketchy: you couldn't find out what specific courses were being run and when. In fact, it wasn't even completely clear how to book - so you decided to give them a call from work the next day.

Work was hectic, so you finally found time to call two days later. You got through to the council, but it sounded like the person on the other end of the phone was looking at the same pages on the website that you'd already seen. She tried to be helpful, but she didn't know any more than you. She took your contact details and promised to get someone to send out some more information.

A few days later - after you'd almost forgotten all about it - some brochures and booking forms arrived. The next day, you took more time out from work to phone up the number on the compliment slip and finally - at the second attempt - spoke to the person organising the courses. After a ten-minute conversation, you managed to get your son booked provisionally onto one course and your daughter on another. You still needed to fill out a couple of forms and write a cheque and post it all off - which meant finding a stamp - but at last it was done.

What a difference this year, now the council has an online booking system. When you go to the website, you find a list full list of course descriptions and dates. You click on a course and date that looks suitable, but a few quick questions show you that your son is too young for the course; you're redirected to a list of courses appropriate to his age group. You find one you know he'd enjoy and fill out the online form.

You spot another course the next week you think he'd also like, so you click on that one and are pleasantly surprised to find the system has remembered your details so booking is even quicker now! It's just as easy to find and book some courses for your daughter, and then dig out your credit card and pay for them there and then through the secure internet site. A few minutes later, you receive emails confirming the bookings. Last year, it took you an hour spread over several days to sort it out. This year, it's all done and dusted in a couple of minutes at nine o'clock at night.

A few days before the courses start, you get another helpful email confirming the details, and telling you what kit your children need to bring, as well as providing you with a consent form to print out, sign and bring along on the first morning. You're impressed!

The council's story

From the council's perspective, things have also improved significantly. Councils have traditionally managed course bookings using manual systems based on paper diaries, spreadsheets or databases running on a single PC - or a mix of all three - which can only be viewed by one person at a time. Online booking offers a huge improvement in customer service for the citizen - but the really exciting benefits for many councils come when it's backed by a comprehensive electronic booking system for staff.

Cash in on immediate savings

Providing citizens with the ability to book online means the contact centre is taking fewer calls, while admin staff spending less time receiving, processing and confirming bookings. Research from SOCITM shows it costs £4 to handle each call to the contact centre, and £7.81 to deal with it face to face, but just 17 pence online. Councils using online booking systems report that take-up can be as high as 60%. So if you're taking 16,000 bookings each year and you take just 50% of those bookings online, that translates to annual savings of in excess of £30,000.

Other gains

• An online booking system also makes it easier for the contact centre to take bookings by phone, because all staff can access the booking system. Within the departments running the courses, more than one person can handle bookings, since staff no longer need to pass enquiries to the person who holds the spreadsheet.

• There are no double bookings, no lost bookings and fewer opportunities for staff to make errors. With a manual system, information can be out of date because someone else hasn't added the latest booking. Plus manual systems allow staff to forget to take all the necessary actions to complete a booking – perhaps the record of a phone conversation doesn't get forwarded – and to make errors when transcribing from handwritten notes or from paper forms or emails.

  An electronic booking system will

  • provide data validation at the point the booking is taken to ensure it's complete
  • include workflow to ensure staff follow procedures correctly
  • save staff time and postage costs by sending email booking confirmations
  • put staff in control by offering exception reporting to flag up issues such as consent forms not having been returned
  • always show staff and the public the most up-to-date information
• The system helps the council ensure participants are booked onto courses for which they're properly pre-qualified, by allowing rules to be configured to that check participants meet certain criteria. People who aren't suitable can be steered towards more appropriate courses.
• By having all data about bookings for all courses available in a single system, managers have better visibility of operations and can more easily report on activity.
• Take up of courses is improved. People are very much more likely to book if they can do so online compared with having to send off a booking form by post. This helps councils maximise participation, make best use of resources, and ensure that courses that should be revenue-neutral don't run at a loss.
• Improved customer service. 24x7 service is especially valuable to working parents.
• The council receives fewer complaints about lost bookings or poor service. Complaints are costly and time-consuming to investigate and resolve, so it reduces the hidden costs of poor service.
• Integration with the council's CRM system provides customer service staff with a unified system for handling enquiries, further improving customer service.

Conclusion

Justifying the cost of implementing electronic booking systems is easy because they provide immediate cash savings on customer service costs and generally pay for themselves in the first year.

Where bookings are handled by a central customer service team on behalf of service departments, an electronic booking system enables the two departments to work together and offer a seamless service. Offering an online 24x7 service improves the citizen experience and is a key element in delivering transformational government.