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City of Markham logo

Industry
Local government

Headquarters
Ontario, Canada

Solutions
Comm100 Live Chat

Comm100 customer
Since 2015

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Contact Sales

The Results in Numbers

4.11 / 5 – Live chat CSAT rating
21,000+ – Total chats in 2022

The Organization

Markham is a city in the Regional Municipality of York, Ontario, Canada. In the 2021 Census, Markham had a population of over 338,000, which ranked it the largest in York Region, fourth largest in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), and 16th largest in Canada.

The Challenge

In 2015, the City of Markham only offered telephone and email support to their constituents and customers. While this had long served many of their constituents in the past, email support volumes were increasingly rising which presented them with two problems.

Firstly, the team was inundated with email tickets. As well as putting strain on their agents, this was also increasing resolution time as the team did their best to tackle each query as efficiently as email allows.

Secondly, high email volumes compared to phone clearly indicated that their constituents and customers wanted to connect with them digitally. However, offering just one digital channel wasn’t sufficiently meeting these digital expectations, and they knew they could do more to improve accessibility, speed, and citizen satisfaction.

The Solution

To improve their support’s accessibility and efficiency, the City of Markham adopted Comm100 Live Chat. Rather than waiting in a queue on the phone or waiting days for a response on email, constituents now receive faster and more convenient support on live chat. As well as improving the constituents’ experience, Comm100 Live Chat has also increased the team’s support capacity as they can resolve queries more quickly and efficiently via live chat.

Launching in 2015, the team received over 16,000 chats within the first year alone. In 2022, this rose to 21,000 chats over the year, indicating a continual preference towards digital communication, and more specifically, live chat communication. The team’s post-chat survey supports this as they have achieved a 4.11/5 average customer satisfaction (CSAT) score – an impressively high score within government standings.

“We have had very positive feedback from our constituents on Comm100 Live Chat. As soon as we launched live chat, they were using it in huge numbers – we were actually surprised by the sheer volume that immediately came in. It just reinforced what we had assumed – our constituents want to get support on live chat because it’s the most convenient and accessible service for so many of them.”

Rosie Cozis, Manager, Contact Centre, City of Markham

Sitting on every page on their website, the team responds to questions from their constituents, as well as external customers such as business partners and other municipalities. Utilizing canned messaging and knowledge base, agents can quickly answer queries or provide links for the customer to locate the information themselves. If the query needs specialist support, the agent can provide them with contact details or open a case for the relevant department to get back to them.

“We were one of the first municipalities in our area to adopt live chat, and since then we’ve had many others contact us to ask us for advice and understand how they could use live chat too. We’ve even given them demos on how we use Comm100 Live Chat and they’ve all been so impressed and want to adopt it too.”

Rosie Cozis, Manager, Contact Centre, City of Markham

The platform’s ease of use and intuitive functionality was a key reason for the City of Markham choosing Comm100. The team learnt quickly how to use it following training from Comm100, as Rosie Cozis explained:

“Our team loves live chat! They had no hesitation in adopting it or learning how to use it. Our older contact center agents embraced it just as much as the young. They want to provide great support to the citizens of the city, and they knew that live chat would help them do this.”

Rosie Cozis, Manager, Contact Centre, City of Markham

The Wrap-up

With a constant eye on innovation, the City of Markham has proven with the adoption of Comm100 Live Chat that it is essential for government agencies to embrace digital communication. With a live chat offering, government agencies can improve their two key challenges – improving support efficiency and citizen satisfaction.

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