The 120 Dasan Call Center Touching Hearts via Phone Calls: 24/7 Multi-dimensional Public Contact Center
The 120 Dasan Call Center is a public service that consults on and deals with the public’s needs and inquiries in real time via various media, including phone calls, video calls, SMS (short message service), Internet and SNS (social network service). The 120 Dasan Call Center has outstanding features that distinguishes it from other public call centers.
First, it provides a different scope of services. The Center provides not only administrative information about the Seoul Metropolitan Government and 25 district offices but also information on transportation and locations, culture and tourism and even other general information. The slogan “Ask Anything,” which now represents the center, has proven the center’s credibility to its customers (citizens, residents and visitors to Seoul) over the past four years.
Second, the 120 Dasan Call center is truly a multi-dimensional contact center, equipped with various channels and services that can reach out to the people regardless of age, disability or language. In addition to the general voice call consultations, the center also offers services via sign language, SMS, Internet chatting and also provides online consultations, while information is offered through SNS (Twitter, me2day, etc.). It also has specialized services, including ‘Senior Assurance Call’ for the elderly who are living alone and services in foreign languages as well to ensure that the service reaches out to everyone.
Third, the center has an outstanding track record which cannot be compared to any other public call center. The number of its daily consultation calls has increased 36-fold within four years, and 79.4% of Seoul citizens recognize the existence of the center, which is almost same as the recognition of the 114 service (telephone directory service analogous to the 411 service in the U.S.). 91.2% of the incoming calls are responded to within 15 seconds, 90% of the requests are handled on spot and the remaining 10% are transferred to the relevant staff in charge of the affairs. Such achievements resulted the customer satisfaction to score 93.9 out of 100.
○ Citizens did not know where to call.
- The Seoul Metropolitan Government consists of 100 departments, 44 offices and 16,061 public officials and total 30,467 employees work at the 25 district offices, each of which is organized into around 30 departments and 20 to 30 community centers.
- The Seoul Metropolitan Government had 17 phone numbers, and 25 district offices used to have several representative phone numbers as well. The caller had to go through a long and complicated automated response system to reach the staff in charge after dialing the number.
- It was difficult to reach the right staff at once, and even after the caller finds the right number, the line was busy or the staff was often out of the office.
- As a result, the satisfaction level for phone-based inquiries was as low as 41.6 points out of 100 (November 2006).
○ Public officials could not do their work due to the influx of incoming calls.
- Frequent phone calls hampered the officials’ work and they suffered from emotional stress.
- Conflicts with citizens frequently occurred due to their lack of phone call response skills.
○ There was an unrecognized service area causing inconvenience.
- Public agencies could not be reached outside of their working hours.
- An extremely low phone call request rate among those with a hearing impairment and the elderly, etc.
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